


A Monster Inside

by frostmrajick



Category: Original Work
Genre: Mental Health Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-06 12:22:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 33,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8750695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostmrajick/pseuds/frostmrajick
Summary: Something is wrong with Jacob's brother. Normally a happy, responsible boy, he's started getting into fights, failing his classes, and hearing voices.





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started off as--as I call it--an AU of an AU of an AU of a fanfiction, based on an idea from an anime. It could almost be mainstream, except that the very core of it was super fanfiction. But then the story got to 300 pages, and I loved it, and got positive feedback on the less fanfictiony parts I was brave enough to share, so I thought I'd try to edit this to a wider audience. Please let me know if 1) any part of it reveals itself as fanfic, 2) the flow is all right (it's a bunch of scenes randomly typed and put together in some kind of order, so I'm trying to find the place for everything), 3) any details are off, 4) that things make sense as I cut some scenes. Also, I know the tense jumps around, I'm trying to fix that, and I apologize! I also suck at titles, and the current one is just something to put in the title box for now. And, you know, just general feedback is always appreciated. Considering this story is my heart...here goes nothing....

“Jacob…”  
Jacob groaned and rolled over. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes. “Still can’t sleep?” he asked his younger brother.  
Ryan shook his head, tears in his eyes.  
Which meant Jacob wasn’t sleeping either. He sighed and climbed out of bed, doing his best not to wake his boyfriend, Aiden. Hopefully at least someone would be able to last the night.  
They went into the main room. Jacob sat on the couch and Ryan immediately climbed up and moved in close to him. “I’m so tired,” the boy sobbed.  
“I know, I know.” His teachers had commented on how he couldn’t focus in class, how he would just sit with his dead down, too tired to work. His eyes looked sunken and bruised, the bags under his eyes were so dark. He yawned--he had been up with him on and off for the last few days, and was exhausted, but at least he had been getting some sleep. Knowing how much worse it must be for the boy was the only thing that kept him from completely losing his temper.  
“Want to put on one of your tapes?” he asked, closing his eyes.  
Ryan whimpered and shook his head.  
“You like your recordings,” he said. “Maybe it will relax you.”  
“I can’t listen.”  
“That’s because you’re tired.” He tried to think. They had run through all their ideas on the second day. Now, they were pretty much just trying to kill time until the morning and hope for a miracle in the meantime.  
“Jacob?”  
“Mm?”  
“Can you sing? Like you used to?”  
He opened his eyes and looked down at Ryan. It had been awhile since he’d heard that request. But then, he had started singing again when they were on their own, so maybe it was the sudden stop again. “What do you want me to sing?”  
“I don’t know…”  
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.  
“Don’t sleep!”  
“Okay, okay.” He opened his eyes again, making a point of staring at his brother while he started to sing softly. Lullabies, some jazz, some rock. Hours. He almost fell asleep himself a couple times, but Ryan was quick to wake him with a panicked cry.  
He must have fallen asleep at some point, though, because he started to rouse, hearing waking noises, despite Aiden’s whispered efforts to quiet the kids. He sighed, and shifted, opening his eyes. He glanced over next to him, and could have cried with relief seeing the child out like a light. He debated whether he could extricate himself without waking him up, or if it wasn’t worth trying. He would stay here all day if it meant keeping the kid asleep.  
Aiden noticed him waking up, and nodded at Ryan. “Couldn’t sleep?”  
“Again.” As it had been more often than not for the past couple months.  
He started to move slowly, but his caution proved unfounded—his little brother didn’t stir, as though all he were making up for all the restless nights.  
“He has to get up for school, anyway,” Aiden pointed out.  
“He only just got to sleep, he can miss it today.” As Aiden started to protest, he said, “It’s been about a week without any sleep at all. Trust me--I’m the one who’s been up with him the whole time.”  
Aiden frowned in concern. “That’s not normal.”  
Jacob sighed in exasperation. “This again? It’s insomnia. Extreme, yeah, but not that unusual.”  
“He can’t focus in class, or do his work here. And four days, of absolutely no sleep? That’s gotta be rough. That’s not even counting all the trouble for the last month. It’s a real problem.”  
He couldn’t argue that. “Okay,” he allowed. “I’ll see about setting up an appointment. And I’ll get something at the drugstore to see if that helps.”  
Aiden nodded. It was a compromise he could handle. “I’ll get the others to school, and let them know he’ll be out today.”  
When Jacob got back from work, Ryan was still sleeping, even after Aiden had apparently moved him in to the bedroom. He ended up sleeping straight through until early the next morning.  
And then the cycle began again.

“Any homework today?” Aiden asked.  
“No…” his word was unconvincing even to himself.  
“No, there’s not, or no, you don’t remember?”  
“Don’t remember…”  
“Are you using the planner?” Aiden had bought him a small notebook to write his assignments in as soon as they were given to help him remember what he had to do.  
Ryan looked at his backpack uncertainly.  
Aiden lifted it to the table and opened it, Ryan hovering nearby as though he didn’t even know what was inside it himself. His hands fluttered by his sides, a nervous habit he seemed to have picked up recently.  
Aiden pulled out his notebook and flipped through it. “Your handwriting’s a mess,” he teased lightly. “Okay, we’ve got that project still to work on--you didn’t write your math pages again.”  
“Sorry,” he apologized with a wince.  
“Okay.” Aiden kept digging through the bag, looking for a hint of the assignment. “Mmm...we need a better system here. It’s been a month, we need to get back into the swing of things here.” He frowned at a piece of paper he had pulled out. “There’s a social studies project--Ryan, this was due last week. Why didn’t Jacob or I see this?”  
Ryan stared at it as though it were a strange creature ready to attack him. “I didn’t--” he says softly. His eyes flick to Aiden pleadingly.  
Aiden sighed. “Ryan, you need to do a better job at keeping track of this. It’s a new year. I know middle school is harder, but we really need to get our focus again. Can you try harder now?”  
He shook his head, then nodded.  
“No? Or yes?”  
He nodded slowly.  
Aiden smiled. “All right. Let me look at this, maybe we can get something together and see if the teacher will give you some points, at least. Sound good?”  
“Yes,” Ryan said quickly. “Can I go listen to my recordings?”  
“School work first, okay?”  
He nodded again and ran to his room. He didn’t want Aiden to see him lose control. He was already trying harder than he even thought possible, and it wasn’t good enough. He didn’t know what else he could do.

“Ryan, it doesn’t have to be perfect,” Jacob told him impatiently. He had been working on a paper for the last hour and had barely written a paragraph because he had to keep going back and making each letter perfectly straight, each word perfectly chosen.  
“Yes, it does,” Ryan ground out, hyper-focused on the work he was doing.  
“They can read it fine--”  
Ryan crumpled up the paper, making a sound of disapproval, and grabbed another sheet.  
“Hey.” Jacob took the paper, flattening it out and examining it. “This is fine, Ryan.”  
“No,” he said simply. He had started rocking slightly, unconsciously.  
Jacob put a hand on his shoulder, and Ryan flinched hard, sending the pencil skittering across the page. He blinked in surprise, then crumpled up that paper as well.  
“Ryan--”  
“No,” Ryan snapped, surprising Jacob. Then the teenager pushed back and put his head in his hands, arms shaking. “I can’t do it,” he said, voice trembling with effort.  
"It’s okay,” Jacob said, putting an arm around his shoulders comfortingly.  
“Don’t!” Ryan shouted, pulling away.  
“Don’t what?” Jacob asked in confusion.  
“I don’t know!” Ryan shouted desperately.  
Jacob watched him with a frown, unsure what he should do.  
Ryan took several deep breaths, then lifted his head and went back to his work. “It’s never good enough,” he murmured.  
“Hey.” Jacob started to reach out to him again, then hesitated. “Um,” he said awkwardly. “Why don’t you take a break? You can listen to a chapter or two of your recording, then come back and we’ll work on this some more.” At the young teenager’s hesitation, he offered, “I’ll look over this paragraph, and see what we can do with it, okay? I bet together, we really can make it perfect.”  
This seemed satisfactory. Ryan nodded and leapt up from the table. Jacob watched him take off to his room. He had to do anything he could to keep the anxiety from becoming too much again, but sometimes, it seemed like they’d never get away from it.  
No, he thought in determination. We will. We have to.

Jacob is working, trying to get himself back in his supervisor’s good graces, so it falls to Aiden—a freelance illustrator with flexible hours—to go to the parent-teacher meetings at Ryan’s school. Last year, all the kids had good results--the worst had been Mitchell getting too smart for the teacher, and as far as problems went, there were worse ones. Ryan himself had been a teacher’s favorite--kind, inquisitive, helpful. There had been some concerns when the anxiety started to interfere, but even then, they had been rushing to help.  
This year, same teachers. Different experience.  
“He forgets his homework more often than not,” was a common complaint. Aiden had noticed that, too. It didn’t seem a day could go by without him forgetting something, and asking him about homework usually resulted in a blank look. He had chalked it up to the stress of starting again, but it had been months now. A few teachers were willing to touch base with Aiden or Jacob to help, but they were the exception.  
“Disruptive in class” was a surprising one. Ryan was one of the most gentle kids Aiden knew, so to hear of him shouting out in class, even rarely, was shocking.  
“Withdrawal,” “unwilling to participate in class,” was almost as bad. Ryan loved learning and would listen to his science recordings for hours on end, enraptured.  
The worst came when his English teacher suggested remedial classes. “He’s not keeping up,” she said strongly. “He’ll only fail, and at worst, will drag the rest of the class down.”  
“I know it’s his worst subject,” Aiden said. “He’s dyslexic. But that bad? I thought his writing was all right, at least.”  
The teacher raised an eyebrow and pulled out several sheets of paper. In handwriting that grew increasingly worse were short paragraphs of run-on sentences, interspersed with nonsense. The last one ended in the middle of a sentence.  
He hadn’t lied--normally the boy’s writing was much better. This was reminiscent of a grade-schooler’s. He had sat with Ryan, helping with homework, listened to the frustration of trying to make everything perfect. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing now.  
“Perhaps just for English,” the teacher suggested, “perhaps just for the year, to give him time to catch up.” She hesitated. “Although, perhaps you should get him tested, just to be sure there’s not an underlying issue.”  
Jacob hated the teacher when Aiden told him. “He’s dyslexic!” he exclaimed in exasperation. “That’s the issue!”  
“There were problems with all the teachers,” Aiden pointed out. “I don’t know. Maybe there is something wrong.”  
“There’s nothing wrong,” Jacob returned heatedly.  
“Then the testing shouldn’t be a problem, right?”  
Jacob shook his head in disgust, but gave in.  
Ryan had been tested several times during his school years. In the middle of elementary, he had been diagnosed with dyslexia, only taking so long because he was smart and had created his own coping strategies. Last year, he had been tested again, before they figured out he was just anxious, not necessarily disabled. Ryan had always been just about average, above grade level in math and science, at grade level on history, and barely at level in reading. He was a bright, curious kid that any school would jump to have.  
The current picture was entirely different. They had expected some delay--the anxiety had been so bad by the end of last year, his teachers had wanted to hold him back, anyway. Even considering that, though, now he’s ranking as just below average, barely on level in science, his best subject, one below in math and history, and a full three levels below in reading.  
“This can’t be right,” Jacob muttered, staring in disbelief at the results.  
“What happened?” Aiden asked Ryan gently. “Did you get anxious?”  
Ryan nodded, twisting his hands. (When had that become a thing, anyway?) “I didn’t have time to get it right,” he explained, voice tight, “and the questions kept twisting.”  
“What do you mean?”  
He looked frustrated by his inability to explain. “I got to the end and the beginning ran away, and I couldn’t find it.” (Aiden flashed on those English sheets.) “I’m sorry,” he added in a small voice.  
“It’s okay,” Jacob reassured him. “It’s probably my fault for not helping you more.”  
“Maybe this will be good,” Aiden said, positive as always. “It will be less stressful, and then you’ll catch up easily. You’ll see, next year will be just like normal.” And yet, a strange sense of disquiet filled him.

They’re both getting frustrated. Aiden knows that Ryan knows this stuff--the reading worksheets are basic stuff that he’s done before. Yes, he’s struggling more than ever, at a lower reading level than he was even last year, but that shouldn’t take away from all he’s learned. Besides, Aiden admits with an inward sigh, it’s probably too simple even for where he’s at now. Lilly could probably do this work, and she’s only in the third grade.  
“Come on, Ryan, we’ve read over this twice now. You know the answers,” Aiden says, patience beginning to wane.  
“I don’t,” Ryan insists.  
“Okay, we’ll let’s start again. The first question is asking about something in the beginning. Let’s just read the first paragraph and see if we can find the answer.”  
Ryan stares at the paragraph so hard, he could burn a hole in the paper. “‘Emma hung the st-st--” he makes a sound of frustration and rocks violently, shaking his chair and the table.  
“Hey, that’s enough of that,” Aiden says firmly, putting a hand on his shoulder to still him. “Sound it out. You’ve already done it twice, remember?”  
Ryan shakes his head slowly. “S. T. Re. A. Mers.” He looked blank, unable to put the syllables together into a word, a basic one that he had learned long ago. Surely dyslexia couldn’t explain this?  
“Streamers. See, like stream, remember?”  
“Stop saying that,” Ryan says angrily.  
“Okay. Let’s keep going.”  
“‘She was. Too. Di--’”  
“Disappointed. That’s what we need to know. So pay attention to the next part.”  
“Disappointed. It was. Her. Bi--’” He frowns in confusion, fingers touching each letter of the next word.  
“You know this--”  
“Don’t!” Ryan slaps a hand to Aiden’s mouth, making the man blink in surprise. He expects Ryan to apologize, to ask if he’s okay--he never strikes out at anyone, even at his most upset--but the boy doesn’t even seem to realize what he’s done.  
“Um, okay,” Aiden says, shaken. They’re both getting frazzled, he thinks. “I’ll read this, and you-- tell me the answer, how’s that sound. ‘She was disappointed. It was her birthday, and no one had said happy birthday. They were too busy planning a party for Mr. Stinton, the custodian.’” He taps the question, question one, where they have been stuck for almost an hour. “So, why is she disappointed?”  
Ryan stares at the paper, gaze flicking all over it. “Because of the water?” he asks uncertainly.  
Aiden frowns. “What water?”  
“The stream.”  
“The--no, streamers aren’t like a stream. There’s no water. Ryan, we just--”  
“I don’t know!” the child screams suddenly, tearing the papers violently and throwing them to the floor.  
There is a moment of shocked silence from them both. Then Ryan puts his head on the table and starts to take shuddering breaths. Aiden can just barely hear him murmuring, “Don’t know don’t know don’t know,” over and over under his breath.  
He slowly reaches out a hand to rub Ryan’s back. “It’s okay,” he says shakily. “We’ve been working for awhile, we’re both tired. Let’s take a break, and I’ll tape these up, and we’ll try again later.”

“Jacob,” Aiden says emphatically, “he hit me. And he tore up his papers.”  
“Like you said, he was probably tired and frustrated. You were, and you’re not the one struggling.”  
“That’s another thing--these were simple worksheets. Lilly could have figured them out, and she’s six years younger. Yes, I know that they said he’s fallen behind, and his dyslexia doesn’t help, but six years. He should know the answers.”  
Jacob frowns. “Well, maybe he was just frustrated because he was bored, then.”  
“No. You should have heard him. He really didn’t know. More than that, we would read it several times and keep running into the same problems, like he couldn’t remember what we had just gone over. The worksheet was a page long, that should not be a problem.”  
Jacob sighs in frustration. “Why are you so insistent there’s something wrong? He’s already got enough people saying that. Somebody has to believe he can do it.”  
Aiden shakes his head. “You sit with him some time. Don’t do it for him, either, just pay attention to how he acts. I’m telling you, something is really wrong. Or do you want another bridge episode on our hands?”  
Aiden knows immediately that he has gone too far. Jacob’s breath catches and his entire body tenses. “I’m sorry,” Aiden says, voice softening. “It’s just--I’m really getting worried about him. I’m not trying to be negative, but something is not right.”  
“He’s fine,” Jacob says emphatically. Before Aiden can say another word, he stands and strides out of the room, studiously avoiding his eyes.  
Aiden sighs. He knows something’s truly wrong, but he doesn’t know how to convince Jacob of this. The other man just doesn’t want to believe it, and who could blame him? This is his brother they’re talking about, after all. Still, he can’t understand why Jacob wasn’t taking the recent changes more seriously. He understood wanting things to be okay, but if they weren’t, he needed to accept that and do what he could to fix it. Denial would only make everything worse.  
“Daddy?” Lilly said, and he looked up to see her standing in the doorway. She looked at him in concern. “You okay?”  
He forced a smile for his daughter. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he lied.  
She smiled, completely accepting his words without a second thought, and ran forward to grab his hand. “We’re all watching TV,” she told him. “You should come and watch, too. Everybody together.”  
He let her lead him into the living area. While the others watched the show, he watched Ryan, sitting on the floor by Jacob, leaning against his brother’s legs. Every so often, he would make some small motion of his hands, a twist of his wrist, a flicking away, but other than that, he betrayed no sign of any kind of anxiety. He even smiled and laughed at the program.  
Aiden shook his head. Maybe he was taking things too seriously after all.

Ryan rocks in his seat. He can’t stop it. It feels like anxiety, moving through his body, but different. The anxiety sucks, and he hates it, but he knows it. Or maybe it is the same old anxiety, and he’s the one who’s different.  
Jacob said he was growing up. When his voice started breaking and his muscles started aching, he said it was because he was going through puberty, getting older. Does that mean that all adults are like this? He doesn’t see Aiden unable to sit still, or Jacob unable to focus on his college work. Is something wrong with him that he can’t do it?  
His teacher touches his shoulder, and he jumps at the sharp flare of pain in his brain. “Focus, Ryan,” she tells him sternly.  
He looks at the worksheets in front of him. He remembers these things, he knows he does. Once his eyes decide to work instead of twisting the letters around, he can see nouns and adverbs, and he knows he knows it. But then he starts reading, and he can’t remember what he’s supposed to look for, and by the time he finds out, he’s forgotten what he’s just read. His mind can’t hold it all, especially while he’s just trying not to fall apart at the same time.  
“Ryan, sit still,” his teacher warns.  
“Shut up!” he shouts at her angrily, rage bubbling up inside him and boiling over. He clenches his hands, and leaps to his feet, ready to take a swing at her. He stops himself just in time. His hands shake as his eyes widen, and he clasps his hands close to his chest in an attempt to control them, to regain some kind of control of his own body. Sorry, he thinks, but he can’t get it out of his mouth. Sorry, sorry, I don’t know...  
The room is silent in shock at his outburst. “Ryan, go to the principal’s office right now,” the teacher tells him.  
He nods, and he can’t get out of the room fast enough.  
They call Jacob, then Aiden. He can’t look at Aiden as they drive back.  
“You yelled at the teacher?” Aiden asks. “Why?”  
“I don’t know,” he replies softly.  
“You must know. You don’t just yell at people for no reason, especially you.”  
“She told me to sit still.”  
Aiden waits, certain there must be more. “That’s it?”  
Ryan nods, not looking at him.  
He doesn’t know how to react to that. It’s one problem on top of many, and it’s getting to be too much. He sighs. “Okay. Well, that’s not okay. You know that.”  
“Stop telling me what I know!” Ryan cries out, putting his head in his hands.  
That does it. Aiden pulls over and turns to look at him. “Ryan,” he says gently, “is something going on that you want to talk about?”  
Ryan shakes his head.  
“Are you sure? Because between school, and the shouting, and acting out, it sure looks like it is.” He reaches over to touch his shoulder, and the teenager flinches away.  
“I’m okay,” he says softly. It sounds like his voice is coming from a long distance away.  
Aiden just looks at him. “Is the anxiety bad again?” he asks. “We can go to the doctor, see if maybe they have some suggestions. Maybe they can help. It’s okay if there is something wrong, you know.”  
He nods. “It’s bad. I don’t--it’s not--”  
“It’s okay….”  
“I just want it to be….”

It’s a peaceful afternoon, Aiden entertaining Lilly while Tommy is at club and Mitchell and Ryan are playing video games.  
And then it all crashes down.  
There’s a crash, and Mitchell starts shouting angrily. Aiden runs into the room. “What’s going on?”  
Mitchell points at the older boy. “Ryan threw the controller--he almost broke the system!”  
Ryan seems oblivious to the exchange, staring intently at the screen. Aiden stopped at the expression on his face, an almost demonic look of anger, hate, and distress. Aiden breathed his name, then said it again, louder.  
The boy blinked, the expression eased, and he looked at Aiden with eyes wide in fear. “What’s wrong?” Aiden asked. He couldn’t imagine what had caused such a feeling in the child in the last few minutes, as they were playing a simple video game.  
“He threw the controller!” Mitchell repeated. “He can’t play anymore!”  
“I’m sorry,” Ryan said quietly. He seemed stunned, as though he couldn’t believe what had just happened. What had just happened?  
“It’s okay,” Aiden reassured him, bending down to his level.  
“No, it’s not!” Mitchell shouted.  
“Well, no, it’s not,” Aiden agreed. “But why don’t you tell me why you did it?”  
Ryan tilted his head and looked at the screen again. “I--nothing,” he said, withdrawing into himself.  
“It’s okay. Just tell me what happened. I promise I won’t be mad.”  
Ryan shook his head, fists clenched tightly, as though he were hanging onto something for dear life. “It’s nothing. I--I just got mad at the game.”  
Aiden let out a breath. He didn’t think this was the truth, but it was clear he wasn’t going to get anything further from him. “Okay. Well, you shouldn’t throw things. You know that. You’re going to have to be grounded from playing video games for a week.”  
“I don’t want to play any more,” he said in a small voice. He looked over at Mitchell. “Sorry for throwing it,” he said.  
Mitchell hesitated, uncertain whether he wanted to hold onto his anger or not. Finally, he relented. “It’s okay,” he said. “Just don’t do it again, okay?”  
Ryan nodded and gave them a weak smile.

“What are you doing?”  
Ryan doesn’t hear the voice at first. The others are getting so loud, and there’s an itch under his skin that won’t go away, prompting him to constant motion. When he notices Jacob, he all but jumps, feeling afraid at being caught. “Nothing,” he says softly.  
Jacob smiles uncertainly. “Talking to yourself?” he asks.  
Ryan nods slowly. It sounds better than the truth.  
Jacob’s eyes go to his hands, and he tries so hard to keep them still, dropping them to his side for all of ten seconds. But it hurts to be still, even more than it hurts to have to keep moving all the time, and his fingers move, then his hands, before he’s even noticed.  
“You okay?” Jacob asks in concern.  
Ryan smiles and nods. He looks past Jacob, listening to the voices that drown him out for a moment. “No, I--” he starts to reply, but stops himself.  
Jacob tilts his head questioningly. “You’re not okay?”  
“I wasn’t--I mean--” He shakes his head. He’s trying to focus on Jacob, see just Jacob, hear just Jacob, and it shouldn’t be so hard, this is his brother, his family, but it is, it’s so hard to concentrate on anything anymore, especially what’s real.  
“Ryan?” Jacob puts a hand on his shoulder, and it’s like a knife in his brain. He does jump this time, yanking away with a cry of “Don’t touch me!”  
Jacob looks shocked by the harsh exclamation. He slowly drops his hand.  
“Sorry,” Ryan says, looking away. He hates himself, hates, hates, hates.  
“You know I’m here for you, right?” Jacob says quietly. “If you ever need to talk or anything.”  
Ryan nods.  
There is a long pause. “Okay,” Jacob says. And leaves.

He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. There’s emotions bubbling up inside of him, and even though it’s the last thing he wants, he can’t stop it. He puts his head down on the desk and tries to stifle the laughter.  
“Is something funny, Ryan?” his teacher demands.  
“No,” he says, shaking his head. He lasts all of two seconds before it comes up, worse than before, erupting from him in a burst of hysterical laughter. Shut up, he tells himself, but it only makes it worse. He’s aware of his classmates looking at him, and he wants to die because he can’t stop.  
“Why don’t you just go share your little joke with the principal?”  
He smiles as he walks past her, past the class, and it hurts, but he can’t stop. What is wrong with him?

He sees the other player, and for a moment, he loses all control. He hears the voices screaming enemy, and he is completely lost to them. He sees an enemy, someone who must be fought, must be destroyed. He launches himself at the other boy, tackling him to the ground before anyone knows what’s going on.  
He’s dimly aware of the shouts, then a hand on his shoulder that sends a spark of pain in his mind worse than the punch that was returned to him (that he only realized later when he saw the bruise). It wakes him, and he falls back, hands up.  
He can’t even defend himself. He attacked the boy, he wanted to kill him. Aiden, and later Jacob, talks to him, trying desperately to understand, and he just sits there silently. He’s grounded, and it’s not enough. He hates himself.

“Something's not right!”  
“I'm sorry my brother's not perfect like yours!”  
“That's not what I'm saying!”  
Suddenly, Ryan shouts out, covering his ears, “Stop it! It's noisy enough without you arguing!”  
They stop and look at him. “What do you mean, it's noisy enough?” Jacob asks.  
Ryan looked up at him with wide eyes. “I didn’t mean…” he starts softly, seeming frightened to have spoken.  
Jacob goes to his side and puts a hand on his shoulder. Ryan winces and stiffens, forcing himself to stay still. Jacob pretends not to notice. “It’s okay,” he says gently. “What’s up? You can tell us.”  
Ryan hesitates. “The monsters. I think it's monsters, anyway. I just hear them, I can't see them.”  
“Hear...?”  
Ryan nodded. “They talk to me in video games, in the recordings.”  
Jacob remembers him coming into the room, demanding he listen to one of the recordings, and looking disappointed when Jacob couldn’t seem to give him the response he wanted. A chill runs through him. “Can you hear them right now?”  
“Yeah. Pretty much all the time.” He looks at the ground shyly. “But I know most people don’t. So I think something’s just wrong with me, and I try to ignore them.” He frowns. “But they get really loud sometimes…”  
Jacob shook his head mutely. “What do they say?”  
Ryan hesitated, wincing. He starts to rock on his heels anxiously. “They say I need to destroy eveJacobne, that they’re enemies and will hurt me. I tried to explain that that’s not true, that I know they’re my friends and stuff, but the voices keep talking. I just ignore it now. Mostly.”  
Jacob didn't know what to make of all this. He looked over at Aiden, who was watching him, and nodded. “Okay,” he said softly.

“What are you doing, Ryan?”  
Jacob looked over to Ryan twisting his hands and looking intense, as though he were listening to something. He blinked and looked up at the sudden attention. “Nothing,” he said in a small voice.  
The doctor nodded, looking thoughtful. “Why don’t we step outside a moment,” he suggested to Jacob.  
In the hall, he told him, “I’m seeing some signs that are a little alarming. I’d like him to see a specialist, a child psychologist, just to make sure. He--”  
“Make sure of what?” Jacob demanded, alarmed. He had expected a quick check, maybe some pills to help him sleep, but mostly a clean bill of health. Not “alarming signs” and “child psychiatrist.”  
“I don’t want to say anything just yet. Better not to get you alarmed and have it turn out to be--”  
“Too late,” Jacob said angrily. “You said alarming signs. There’s obviously something. Tell me. What?”  
The doctor hesitated, then relented. “Childhood bipolar disorder is very rare, so I’m sure it’s something--”  
“Bipol--he’s not crazy!”  
“Probably not,” the doctor agreed. “That’s why I didn’t want to say anything. As unusual as it is, I’m sure it’s likely something more common, stress or a learning disability, for example. That’s why I want a specialist to take a look.”  
“But--why would you even think that?”  
“Severe sleep disturbance is usually the first clue. Some of his school problems, inappropriate affect, hearing voices. Like I said, it’s probably something else, but best to double-check. It’s much more treatable in the early stages, if it comes to that.”  
“It won’t. He’s not.” He couldn’t stand the doctor’s look of pity, turning away and going back into the room without another word.  
“Let’s go, Ryan.”  
The boy doesn’t respond, eyes fixated on something else.  
“Hey, Ryan, come on.” There is an edge to his voice that he doesn’t like. The doctor’s words have crawled under his skin like an infestation.  
Ryan blinks and looks over at him. “We’re done?” he asks, surprised, jumping down from the table.  
“Yeah.” He tries to keep the irritation from his voice.  
“‘Kay.” He seems perfectly normal right now, happy and complacent as though he always has been. No one knows what they’re talking about, Jacob thinks.  
The doctor enters the room and hands Jacob a slip of paper. “A prescription for some medicine to help him sleep. Severe insomnia can be hazardous to one’s health, and could be the cause of it all, so absolutely try those first. Start with half a dose, since he’s still a child, and if that doesn’t work, go ahead and bump it up to a full one.” He hands him another paper. “And that’s the information I mentioned before. I do recommend looking into it, just to be safe.”  
“Thanks,” Jacob says curtly, pushing past him to leave. He shoves the prescription into one pocket to fill on the way home, and the other into another pocket to determinedly forget about.

Aiden hears a sound and goes into the other room, and is shocked at what he finds. Ryan is on the floor with his player, but instead of quietly listening to his tapes like he would normally be, he is tearing up one of his tapes, and another one is in pieces on the floor around him.  
“Ryan!” he shouts, but the boy doesn’t react, so absorbed in his destruction. Aiden drops next to him and pulls the remains of the tape from his hands. He doesn’t know why he bothers, it’s already long past gone, but he doesn’t think in the moment. “Hey!”  
Ryan looks up at him, and his eyes are clouded with anger and fear, making Aiden’s anger shift quickly to worry. “What’s wrong?” he asks in a breath.  
Ryan blinks, and clenches and unclenches his hands for a moment before speaking. “They--they--they--” he stammers. While the anger is gone from his face, the fear is still disturbingly present.  
“They who? The voices? What is it?” Aiden asks gently.  
Ryan stops and shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says softly.  
“Ryan. I know you don’t do stuff like this for no reason. If you want to just explain it to me, I want to listen. I want to help.”  
He shakes his head again. “I can’t,” he says, voice firm and distraught. “I don’t--I can’t.”  
Aiden waits a moment, giving him a chance to change his mind. He sighs. “Okay, well, then I have to assume there isn’t a good reason and you have to be grounded. If you change your mind, though, you can always talk to me, okay?” He puts a hand on Ryan’s shoulder, but the boy winces and moves out from under his hand. “I promise I won’t be mad or anything.”  
“Okay,” Ryan says absently, gaze slipping away.  
Aiden shows the pieces to Jacob when he gets back, defiantly asking him to deny the physical evidence before him.  
Jacob takes the tapes from him and turns them over in his hands, visibly shaken though he tries not to show it.  
Jacob, listen!  
It’s already loud enough.  
I hear them all the time. But I know most people don’t. So I think it’s just something wrong with me.  
He’s silent for so long, that Aiden starts to get worried.  
“I mean,” he starts, “maybe it’s nothing serious, just--”  
“It’s not--” Jacob sighs and shakes his head. “I can come up with a thousand excuses, but then I just need another, and…” He drops his hands and takes a deep breath. “I don’t know. I still don’t think it’s...that. But I’ll see if we can get him to another doctor who can figure it out. To be honest, I’m starting to get worried, too.”

“Jacob! Jacob!” Ryan is calling loudly. Jacob drags himself up as Aiden shifts.  
“What’s wrong?” Aiden asks sleepily.  
“I got it,” Jacob tells him. “Ryan, shh, you’ll wake eveJacobne up.”  
“I need medicine,” he says, voice disturbingly panicked.  
“Okay, okay, be quiet,” Jacob urges, making his way to the bathroom. He thinks--insomnia itself isn’t so bad, and a sleepless night or two won’t kill him. He mentally counts the days. Three--no, four. Okay, no wonder he was practically in tears from exhaustion. When he did insomnia, he did it well.  
He shakes out one of Ryan’s sleeping pills, the boy staring at him desperately. He quickly grabs the medicine and swallows it. “When can I sleep?” he asks.  
“Give it a few minutes to work.”  
Ryan rocks on his heels uncertainly. “Not working, not working,” he says.  
“It will, just give it a few minutes. Come on.” He takes him in to the living room, and they sit together on the couch, Ryan still rocking. “Calm down. It’ll be okay.”  
But twenty minutes later, he’s still not sleeping, and he’s demanding more. Jacob tells him he’ll check; the instructions say to only take once per night, but it also says that the dosage can be doubled if ineffective, so he shakes out another one.  
As the time passes, they’re both starting to get desperate. Jacob starts singing, but even that’s not helping. After almost an hour and a half, Ryan is shaking his head and sobbingly demanding more, please, he wants to sleep, please. The desperation in his voice is too much for Jacob. He looks for any sign that a third dose will be okay--and doesn’t get it. He looks at the side effects, trying to weigh the risks. Some are pretty severe. He hesitates.  
A cry choked by sobs comes from the other room. “Jacob, please, help!”  
That does it. One night won’t kill him, and he’ll talk to the doctor later.  
Ryan doesn’t wait, but snatches the pill from his hand and swallows. Jacob prays that that will be enough, because he wasn’t even sure about this, he definitely can’t go any higher. He puts an arm around his brother and resumes singing. Please work, please work, please work…  
Next thing he knows, it’s morning, and Ryan is collapse against him in sleep. He breathes a sigh of relief. Thank god. He’ll probably be out of it for the rest of the day, though--the medication said to take it only if you had seven to eight hours to sleep, and it was at least three when they finally got to sleep, a little less than four hours ago. He debates whether to wake him or just let him miss yet another day of school.  
But Ryan is stirring, sighing, and opening his eyes. By the time the others are awake, he’s up and running with no signs of tiredness. He’ll probably crash later, Jacob thinks to himself.

“What happened?” Jacob asks when he arrives at the school to pick him up. He kneels by Ryan to examine the black eye the boy is sporting.  
“I got in a fight,” he says in a tired voice.  
“Why?” Jacob asks in exasperation. It seems like it’s one thing after another anymore, and he has no idea why. This is the third time he or Aiden has had to pick him up in the past two weeks. He doesn’t understand what has happened to turn his sweet little brother into this problem child.  
“I had to.”  
“You did not. You don’t have to fight--you have to not!”  
“I did,” Ryan says. His eyes flick up to Jacob’s, a flash of pleading, before dropping away into blandness again. “You don’t understand.”  
“Ryan.” Jacob sighs in frustration. “Okay. No video games--”  
“I can’t,” Ryan says simply. “I threw Mitchell’s controller.”  
That throws Jacob. “Okay,” he says after a moment. “Then no recordings--”  
“Except for schoolwork,” Mitchell finishes. “I forgot about a project and got a bad grade. I can’t go out with friends. Can’t go to my science club. Can’t watch TV.”  
Jacob listens to the list of punishments. “We’ve told you all this?” he asks quietly. “Why?”  
Ryan shrugs. He looks down at his hands twisting in his lap and clenches them into fists.  
“What is going on with you, Ryan?” he demands desperately.  
Ryan just looks at him, unable to answer.

The voices are loud.  
He puts his head on his desk, covering it with his hands. The teacher speaks to him, but her voice blends in with the others. Probably telling him to stop. That’s all anyone ever tells him now. Donn’t they realize that he would if he could? But he has to. But he can’t.  
He shakes his head and twists to try to bury his head further. But the voices he’s hearing aren’t coming from outside his ears.  
“Shut up!” he shouts, flying up. “Shutupshutupshutup!”  
The entire class stops and turns to look at him in astonishment. The voices swam around him, wrapping him up like heavy chains. The teacher says something to him, dragging him down and choking him. He screams in despair and lashes out, kicking his desk over. Nearby students shout and leap up. It’s too much--the voices, the feelings, of rage and fear and sorrow, all of it weigh upon him and he grimaces, putting his hands on his head to try to stop the explosion.  
“Ryan!” the teacher’s angry voice echoes in his ears. “That is enough. Go to the principal’s office, right this minute. You are done for the day.”  
Okay, he thinks, just let me out.  
No, he thinks, I’ll be good I’ll be good.  
It’s okay, he thinks. Just keep it together. You’re okay.  
He picks up his bag, every movement controlled and deliberate, his thoughts solely on lifting the bag. Taking one step. Taking another. Don’t look at anyone, that’s too much, don’t, focus.  
He makes it halfway to the office, and starts thinking of how disappointed Jacob will be, and how it’s not fair that he’s trying so hard and just getting worse and no one knows and no one can know how can they not hear so loud but no one but too much but it hurts whywhywhy  
The rage boils up again and he screams and throws his bag into the wall. Done. DONE.

“Woods, call for you.”  
Jacob sighs, wondering what’s going on now. Usually, Aiden gets the call first--he can do his illustrations at home, so he’s usually the one free. Ryan has been having so many problems lately, though, some of them bad, that there have been times that he gets a call at the garage where he works, as well, since he is the legal guardian.  
He wipes his hands on a rag, leaving the car he is working on, to answer the phone. His supervisor gives him a mildly disapproving look. He’s a good worker, so they’ll overlook a lot, but he knows that the frequent calls are starting to push the limits.  
“Jacob Woods,” he answers.  
All thoughts of disappointed irritation are gone when he hears the news. Ryan’s teacher had apparently sent him to the principal’s office that morning. He never showed up, never went to any of his classes. He had his school things on the floor in the hallway.  
“Why did it take several hours to call?” he demands. Ryan’s still a minor, they should have noticed something and called Jacob immediately.  
They give him some bullshit about having other students to take care of, and Ryan is a problem child so his disobedience should not be surprising, he’s probably just skipping--they sugarcoat the words, of course, but Jacob hears the meaning. He hangs up on them at that point.  
“I have to leave,” he tells his supervisor, already grabbing his jacket to go out into the rain. As his supervisor starts to protest, he snaps, “My brother is missing.”  
His supervisor blinks in surprise. “What do you mean?”  
“I mean he disappeared from school several hours ago and they just now thought to call me and who knows where he is by now.” Even he can hear the panic in his voice, and he pauses to take a deep breath. Panicking will not help right now.  
“Do you want to call the police?” The man actually seems concerned about him.  
“I don’t--yeah, I probably should, thanks. And my partner, I should let him know.” Since he apparently can’t trust the school to.  
Aiden offers to deal with the police while Jacob goes out to start looking for his brother. One relief for him, because he knows he would not be able to deal with that, and Aiden’s calmer and more of a people person, anyway. He’s not sure how much good he’ll be, on foot and bus, but he needs to do something.  
Jacob finally finds him a dozen miles from the school, walking in a blank state, soaked from the rain he is apparently oblivious to. “Ryan!” he shouts, running up to him. “What the hell?! The school called and said you disrupted the class, and then you just disappeared! I’ve been looking for hours! What’s--” he stops with a start when he sees the child’s face. His eyes are distant and blank, as though he doesn’t even see Jacob. He puts his hands on Ryan’s shoulders and shakes him. “Hey, Ryan!”  
Ryan finally focuses on him. “Ry…” He grimaces and twists his head.  
“What’s wrong, Ryan? Talk to me.” He rubs Ryan’s shoulders absently.  
“Stop!” Ryan yanks away, voice tensed in pain, eyes squeezed shut.  
“Stop what? Are you okay? Ryan....”  
“Jacob,” the child said. “Hurts--loud--much--can’t--then--”  
“Slow down. Come on, I--” he started to reach out again.  
Ryan pulled back and shook his head, head in his hands. “No,” he moaned.  
“Ryan--”  
The boy looked up, eyes wide in a look of absolute terror. “Jacob,” he gasped. “Help. Something’s wrong.”  
“What is it? Talk to me, okay.” He takes Ryan’s hand, but he pulls away, shaking his head.  
“Can’t,” he moans. “It hurts.”  
“What?”  
“Touching hurts, and the voices are loud, and I didn’t know what to do--” he screams and stamps his feet in frustration, shoving at Jacob.  
“Whoa, what’s going on?” Jacob is officially freaking out.  
“Shut up!” Ryan screams, and starts hitting himself in the head.  
“Ryan!” He grabs Ryan’s hands to stop him, but that only makes the child scream again, and wrench his arms away while kicking at Jacob. He looks at Jacob with wild eyes, eyes of a stranger, and he snarls as he leaps to attack him. Jacob doesn’t know what to do, to stop him, to not hurt him, and just holds his arms up in defense as Ryan begins to hit him. Then he shakes his head and pushes past him to run.  
Jacob reacts, ignoring his bruised arms as he chases after the boy, catching and holding him as he screams and struggles. “Hurts enemy bad destroy,” he gasps.  
“Enemy? I’m not--” his breath leaves him as Ryan drives an elbow into his stomach, forcing him to release him. He realizes he’s hearing sirens, and it occurs to him the sight they must be, a child and adult outside fighting and screaming in the rain. “Ryan!” he shouts, running after the boy, catching him, and this time, he will not let go. Ryan screams, voice already growing hoarse from the force, and collapses against him, sobbing.  
“Hurts hurts hurts,” Ryan sobs.  
Jacob pulls him to the ground with him, wrapping his whole body around the strange child struggling against him. “It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here,” he offers helplessly.  
The police arrive to find them that way, and that only sets Ryan off again. He struggles against Jacob’s hold, breaks out and launches himself at an officer, striking out at him as though in a desperate attempt for survival.  
“Does he have a disability or mental condition?” one of the officers asks him.  
It suddenly flashes on Jacob, so bright it makes him gasp. “Bipolar disorder,” he breathes. “I mean, they suggested, the doctors, but it hasn’t been--it’s not--”  
The other officer has Ryan pinned to the ground, still struggling and screaming and sobbing. “Don’t hurt him,” Jacob says, starting for him.  
“Bipolar,” the first officer tells the second. “Let’s call--”  
“Jacob!” Ryan calls for him desperately.  
Jacob is immediately kneeling next to him. “I’m right here,” he says, “it’s okay. You’re going to be fine.”  
Ryan looks at him, and Jacob is ready to shove the officer away, but he reluctantly lets him up, ready to jump into the struggle again. But Ryan is done--he pulls his knees in to his chest and holds his head in his hands, murmuring to himself. Jacob doesn’t know if he should risk touching him or not, so he just keeps saying I’m here it’s okay I’m here it’s okay.  
“I need help, Jacob,” he says in a quiet voice.  
One of the officers puts a hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “I’ve seen this a couple of times,” he says. “Psychotic break. You need to take him to the psychiatric hospital before he hurts someone else or himself.”  
Jacob starts to protest that he would never hurt anyone, but there is so much he never would have expected, and the words die in his throat.  
“We can give you an escort, or we can take him, or we can call an ambulance,” the officer continues.  
“I don’t drive,” Jacob confesses. “But I need to go with him.”  
The officer nods and pulls out his radio to call an ambulance. When it arrives, Ryan is shaking and his words have deteriorated to meaningless ramblings. When he hears the sirens, he is on his feet and before Jacob can stop him, he is leaping at an officer, kicking and swinging at him.  
The medics analyze the scene immediately, and before Jacob can react, the two officers are holding Ryan still while a medic injects him with a sedative. In several minutes, he is falling limp, eyes fluttering and words slurring. Jacob climbs into the ambulance after him, holding his hand as they ride.  
“‘S’okay, Jacob,” he says sleepily. “It’ll end now, all I want, okay, end it all.”  
Once they get to the hospital, Jacob has to pull away, and Ryan puts up a small fight at that, but he’s just too tired to do much. Jacob feels numb as he fills out paperwork and calls Aiden, and waits.  
Aiden finds Jacob at the hospital, sitting with his head in his hands. “Jacob,” he gasps, going to sit next to him. “What happened? Is everything okay?”  
“Bipolar,” Jacob says flatly. “He really is.” He lifts his head, eyes wet with tears. The sight makes Aiden gasp. Had he ever seen Jacob cry? He takes a deep breath. “I mean, they have to observe him awhile before they can be sure, but…they say he had a psychotic episode. He started yelling in class and flipped a desk. The teacher told him to go to the principal and he walked out of the school. I found him thirteen miles from the school, he’d just kept walking. He wouldn’t let me touch him, and he starting talking nonsense. And then--” he swallows, trying to summon the strength to keep going. “He asked me to help him. He broke down. He--he was so--” He takes a shuddering breath and puts his head in his hands again.  
Aiden rubs his back in a weak attempt at comfort. “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”  
“They want to keep him here for awhile so they can figure out a diagnosis and work out some medication.” His voice grows thick with sobs. “I didn’t believe it, I didn’t want to believe it. If I had, maybe he would have been okay. They could have given--” He shakes his head. “I--”  
“No,” Aiden says firmly. “It’s not your fault. He’ll be okay. They’ll figure out what’s going on, and then they’ll give him some medicine, and everything will be fine. You’ll see.”


	2. Life, part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jacob and his family try to readjust to life with a mental illness.

Jacob goes in to the hospital the first time he is able, the day after Ryan’s admitted, only to be told that his brother is sleeping--the medication can make people drowsy--and to come back later.  
The next day is the same. He gets to see his brother for a few minutes, but he is groggy and doesn’t understand much around him.  
The third day, it’s like there’s no medication. Jacob comes in to find chaos. Ryan runs down the halls, manic, and Jacob is shocked to see he is half-undressed. He immediately rushes over and grabs him, and Ryan wails and falls to the ground, kicking at him.  
“Ryan! What are you doing? Where’s your shirt?”  
“Hurts!” Ryan screams at him, pulling his arm away. He lays on the ground and proceeds to attempt to take his pants off as well.  
“Ryan!” Jacob grabs his hands to stop him.  
“Hurts!” Ryan yells, kicking his chest with both feet. Jacob gasps as the air leaves his body and he falls back. He sees two male nurses go past him to Ryan, who hollers all the louder as they grab him mid-strip. His breath is coming in loud, panicked bursts and his hands are stiffened into claws as he fights them off like they’re the ones attacking him. “Hurts, owowow!”  
Jacob doesn’t understand. It’s just cloth, why is he attacking like it’s fire, or thorns? But then, he remembers reaching out to touch the child only to have him pull away, telling him not to. Does he feel something Jacob or anyone else doesn’t?  
He knows nothing about this.  
He can’t stand the cries of pain any longer, especially when it’s doing no good--they haven’t gotten his clothes back on, only stopped him from undressing completely. And why is he doing this, anyway? Even if it hurts, he knows better than to do this in a public place. His brother is so shy and innocent, he would never do something like this.  
He gets up and moves forward. One of the orderlies holds a hand out to stop him, and he says, “It’s okay, I’m his brother, Jacob, Jacob Akiyama.” Ryan yells his name just then, amidst his proclamations of pain, and maybe it’s that or maybe they figure they have a higher priority right then because they let him help.  
He pins Ryan and tells him, “It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re going to be okay” while they maneuver his limbs to dress him, one of the orderlies calling for a sedative. He wants to protest the drug, but he can’t stop looking at his brother. His eyes are confused and scared, as though asking why he’s acting his way, what is happening to him. Jacob can’t answer. It’s easier to just let him sleep.  
They drag his brother away, half-unconscious, but at least not screaming or looking at him like that anymore. When he asks, they say he’s going to a “quiet room,” and no, he can’t visit.  
They do tell him that it’s likely a bad reaction to one of the medications. Sometimes, it can take weeks to react at all, but sometimes, it’s next to instantaneous. All they can do is play with it and hope for the best. Easy for them to say.  
Aiden finds him sitting in Ryan’s room, holding a medication bottle and one of Ryan’s recordings. When Aiden enters, Jacob holds the bottle out to him without looking up. “I went and got some pain medicine,” he says. “A...a couple bottles. I didn’t take any, but...god, I wanted to.” He sighs. “It really hurts.”  
“Not that kind of hurt,” Aiden tells him, taking the medication and sitting next to him. “You’re doing the right thing, you know. They’ll figure out a way to help him.”  
“Yeah. But still...I want it over. I want my brother with me. It’s almost a physical hurt. There has to be something, some way--” He shakes his head. “I shouldn’t be thinking about this. I’m not the one hurting.”  
“Yeah, you are,” Aiden tells him.  
“Not--”  
“Jacob. If you’re hurting, you’re hurting, and that’s it. I think you should talk to somebody, or see about medication or something.”  
“No.” Jacob sits up. He looks at the recording, then sets it beside him, hand lingering on it before moving away. “I’m okay.”  
Next time he goes in, he actually gets to see his brother. Kind of. Ryan is carrying on a conversation with something only he can see, words strung together in unintelligible sentences. He barely acknowledges Jacob. The next day is the same, with him pacing around the room manically. When Jacob moves to stand in the way, Ryan just shoves him away roughly.  
He asks when the medication will actually help instead of flipping him from one psychosis to another, and they just tell him that it will take time.  
After a week of this, they start to see some kind of improvement. Mostly, Aiden watches the other kids, Lilly especially demanding to see her “big brother,” but they agree that that would not be a good idea right now. Sometimes, he manages to come with Jacob, offering much needed support. Ryan goes to Jacob and starts to hug him, then pulls back and looks at him with uncertainty. “Do it so it doesn’t hurt,” he says.  
Confused, Jacob attempts to hug him again.  
“No,” Ryan says in frustration, stepping back. “It hurts. Make it not.”  
He thinks of several times in the last month or two, every time he tried to touch his shoulder or hold his hand, and Ryan would pull away, making a face of pain. He had thought it was just tiredness, or growing up and away from the contact. Now he wonders if it’s been something more sinister. “I don’t know how to,” he says helplessly.  
Ryan looks at him as though he’s betrayed the child, as though he can’t understand why Jacob would purposely hurt him like this, because it must be on purpose, it’s never hurt before. He turns to Aiden and holds his arms out.  
Aiden smiles and says, “It’s okay,” and tries to give him what he needs.  
“No!” Ryan says, and his eyes are wide in fear and uncertainty. “So it doesn’t hurt!”  
“I don’t know how,” Aiden says. “Can you tell me how?”  
Ryan just stares at him. He lifts a hand unconsciously, rolling his wrists. Softly, he murmurs, “Don’t understand, don’t understand, don’t understand….” He turns and walks away from them.  
Aiden and Jacob look at each other and go to follow him.  
He stops several orderlies and asks for some kind of touch, desperately seeking some comfort without the pain. None can give it to him. The third looks at Jacob and tells him that sensory issues sometimes come with mental illness. Try a couple different ways until they find something that works. But nothing works.  
The next time, when Jacob goes alone, it’s not much better. The medications seem to be working because he sees Jacob, but it’s almost worse for it. He rocks in his seat, unable to sit still. “Where am I? Where am I? Where am I?” he demands, eyes wide in fear.  
“In the hospital, remember?” He knows better than to attempt to hold him in comfort. He tried once, and nothing good came of it. He sits on his hands to squash the desire.  
“Am I sick?” Ryan looks at him with those eyes, desperate for answers that Jacob can’t give him.  
“Kind of.”  
“What’s wrong?”  
Jacob tries to think how to explain it, especially without triggering his anxiety. “Your head is sick. It keeps trying to make you think things that aren’t true and that will hurt you. But the doctors are trying to figure out how to help you, and then you can come home and things will be okay again.”  
“Like my anxiety?” Ryan’s hands are moving, twisting and rolling, seemingly without his attention. Jacob watches them, remembering the doctors telling him the stimming movements are one small symptom, and he feels his stomach drop as he remembers every single time he saw it throughout the past weeks and thought nothing of it. “I want to be okay,” Ryan says desperately. “I want to go to school and not hurt anyone and have things go back to how they were.”  
“I know--” Jacob stops, something in his words reminding him of another day. “Ryan,” he asks quietly, “how long have you been feeling this way? Hearing the ‘monsters’, not able to concentrate…”  
Ryan frowns and shakes his head. “I don’t know. Always?”  
“Was it before summer?”  
Last year, towards the end of the school year, he had grown more and more anxious. The always happy child would become irritable and snap at nothing. He would sleep all day and still complain of tiredness. He would become so worried about little things that he would spin into panic attacks in seconds. They figured it was just puberty, he was a new teen now, after all. After going on some medication, and then school being let out for the summer, he had been okay for awhile, until everything came back with a vengeance this past year.  
Ryan hesitates, then nods. “It wasn’t so bad, I could ignore it, kind of. And then it went away for awhile. That was nice. I thought it was just something all grown-ups felt.”  
Jacob wants to scream. He’s had this for a year, at least, and he hadn’t even known, he’d just thought it was normal!  
“But then you said it wasn’t, and I knew there was something wrong with just me.”  
Jacob starts at that. “I said…?”  
“My recordings,” Ryan explains, and Jacob suddenly remembers him coming in, all manic excitement that soured to disappointment when Jacob couldn’t tell him the right words. He was trying, he realizes, feeling sick. He was trying to tell me something was wrong and I didn’t even realize…  
“Well,” he says, trying his best to stay calm and not completely fall apart on his younger brother, right when he needs him, “now we know. It’s not you, it’s just a sickness. The doctors will make it better, and you’ll be fine.”  
Ryan looks up at him hopefully, and Jacob swears to do whatever it takes to make his prediction come true.  
He has to step away at that point and just breathe. He keeps going back, though, because what else can he do? Sometimes Ryan begs for an explanation or for forgiveness, for being bad, and all he can offer is words and prayers.  
He tells his supervisor, and they agree to reduce his hours to give him time with his family. He has been going back to school, trying once again to earn his enginnering degree, but no his teachers tell him he is allowed two days of skipping class before his grade drops, and he’s already lost that. He can’t bring himself to feel too badly about skipping, though, needing to visit Ryan every day. There are far more important things right now, and he just cannot deal with the rest. He wouldn’t be able to focus even if he was in class. He sits down to do his homework and just stares at the blank page for hours before giving up.  
Sometimes he writes music, for the first time since he was a teenager himself. Once, he was an abused teen trying to shelter his younger brother, and his only tool for survival was his music. Then he was a runaway teen father, with two little people to look out for, and he was too busy to write but could channel his anxiety and worry into lullabies.  
Like then, he has to get it all out of him somehow, and this is always the automatic reaction. But the jarring, discordant notes clash into each other in his head, an audible version of the mess they are in, and he tears up the results, as though that will erase the source. At least at work, he doesn’t have to think. He can’t do that right now.  
After three weeks, they think they’ve managed to find a workable medication schedule for him. It’s an awkward balance of symptoms and side effects, and they make no guarantees that there won’t be much more fine-tuning in the future.  
One miligram of Risperdal, which will probably need to be increased gradually, for the psychosis. Twenty milligrams of fluozetine for the depression, to avoid the suicidal ideations. Two others drugs to treat side effects of the others--they had reported that one common side effect was involuntary muscle movements, and he already showed some of those, though the upside was he wasn’t tired like most people got--on the contrary, he was hyperactive enough that they considered another prescription to help him focus but wanted to give his body a chance to adjust to the other medications first. They did recommend continuing with the sleep medication, since that was a common disturbance with the disorder, as well, one of the first warning signs.  
Jacob can see the effects on the car ride back, in the way he seemed to constantly need to move, rocking or moving his hands or his head. But then, there had been some of that before he went to the hospital, so maybe that was the disorder. It was impossible to untangle everything, and it made him tired to even try.  
He looks tired, haunted, eyes dark. “Have you been sleeping okay?” Jacob had asked when they picked him up. Ryan had only nodded--he hadn’t said much the whole time.  
When they get back to the apartment, the other boys are wary—they’re old enough to know that something is different, that somehow, the world has changed. Lilly, on the other hand, comes running up with no inhibitions, thrilled to see her oldest brother after so long away.  
“You’re back!” she cheers, running up and giving him a hug.  
His entire body stiffens and he grimaces as though in pain and pushes her away roughly.  
Lilly looks shocked and hurt.  
“Sorry,” he says sadly. “I—I can’t really do that now.”  
“Why?” she asks, a mix of concern and curiosity, unaware of the depths of the question and the illness.  
He hesitates and tilts his head, flexes his hands. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I just can’t. You can’t hug me like that now, okay? I’m sorry.”  
He’s clearly distraught about it, and Lilly senses it, offering smiles instead of confusion. “Okay,” she says simply. “But you can hug me if you want. Or tell me if you change your mind.”  
He gives her a small attempt at a smile. “Will do,” he tells her.

That night at dinner, Ryan just pushes his food around. “It must be nice to be back, huh?” Aiden says with a smile, trying to draw him out. Ryan doesn’t respond, watching his fork chase his vegetables around his plate. They had made his favorite dinner in celebration of his coming home, and he hasn’t eaten a bite.  
“Not hungry?” Jacob asks softly. Ryan shakes his head. Jacob doesn’t blame him. It’s been a stressful couple of weeks--months, if he’s being honest--and he’s on several medications right now, who knows what they’re doing to him. “You want to go to your room?” Ryan nods and gets up.  
After he’s finished, Jacob goes to check on him. Ryan is lying on his back on the bed, watching his hands move through the air above him. “See the lights, Jacob,” he says in a distant voice. “They’re so pretty.”  
Jacob swallows. “You’re hallucinating,” he says quietly. Weren’t the medications supposed to stop that?  
Ryan tilts his head. “Oh.” He drops his hands, but his eyes continue to follow something not there.

 

“I want books,” Ryan tells him. “Books about me.”  
Of course he does. He wants to learn everything, of course he would want to know about this illness taking him over.  
They go to the library and he goes immediately to the audibooks, murmuring the words over and over. “Bipolar, schizophrenia. Bipolar, schizophrenia.” Jacob wants to tell him to stop, it sounds like a summoning chant, but he knows with his declining concentration, it’s probably necessary for him to remember why they’re here in the first place. “Nothing, Jacob,” he cries out in dismay.  
Jacob scans the titles, grabbing Ryan as he starts to wander off. “No, Jacob,” the teenager tells him, yanking his arm away.  
“Sorry. Just stay near me, okay?” He straightens. “I don’t think they have any. Just pick out a couple books, and I can read them to you, okay?” He looks over and sees that the boy has gone. He curses under his breath and runs off to find him.  
“Stay with me,” he says, finding him a little too close to the doors.  
“Don’t touch!” Ryan yanks away from him again, making a pained face.  
“Then stay with me. Let’s go get some books, and I’ll read them to you.”  
Ryan follows him back, making sure not to look at or touch anyone. He starts pulling books from the shelf, tossing them to the floor after a cursory glance.  
“Ryan, don’t--” Jacob picks up the books.  
Suddenly, the door alarm starts to ring out, someone taking the wrong way out.  
Ryan screams and slams his hands over his ears. The alarm is over in less than a minute, but he continues to scream like he’s dying. Jacob grabs him and drags him out of the building, sitting them outside. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says quietly.  
After several minutes, he starts to calm down. “Sorry,” he says quietly.  
“It’s okay. That was kind of loud, huh?”  
Ryan nods, not looking at him. He’s probably thinking the same thing Jacob is--they’ve been in there before when the alarm went off, and it was never a problem before. Now, it seems like anything can set him off.  
“Want to go back in and get some books?” Jacob asks.  
Ryan shakes his head, rolling his wrists anxiously.  
“I can’t go without you.” Fourteen, he thinks. Normally, he would be okay with leaving a fourteen-year-old. Even Lilly, at eight, he would feel okay about leaving outside for a few minutes while he ran inside to grab some books. But then, they wouldn’t be in this situation with her, with anyone but a mentally ill teenager.  
“I want some books,” he says irritably.  
“Then you have to come in with me.”  
Ryan makes a sound of frustration. Once, he was a ten-year-old taking care of three other kids, working and doing homework and taking care of the entire family on a regular basis. Jacob and Aiden were working, and he took on the responsibility of two parents. Now, he can’t even be trusted to take care of himself for a few minutes. “I don’t want to. It’s loud.”  
“It’s not loud now. They shut the alarm off.”  
“Loud,” he insists. “You want to hurt me.”  
“You know that’s not true, it’s the last thing I want--”  
He screams again, just a short one this time, stamps his feet into the ground and burrows his head against them. “Sorry, Jacob,” he murmurs. “I’ll go, I’m okay, I’m sorry.”  
“It’s...okay.” He’s not sure what to do with these sudden swings. One minute, he’s ready to fight and the next, he’s a broken boy in need of comfort.  
Jacob makes sure they go quickly, grabbing a couple of books and getting out as soon as possible. That night, Ryan brings him a book to read to him--he tried by himself earlier, but ended up throwing it in frustration. His dyslexia is the last of their worries, and yet here it is, still there, hiding behind attention problems and mood swings. He starts to go to Jacob, then stops and rocks on his heels uncertainly. He slowly goes to another chair and curls up in it, leaning against the back and staring at nothing. Jacob can’t help but think that he looks like he wants someone else there with him. But he can’t. His illness forbids it.  
Jacob reads for awhile, hating every word. Ryan jumps up and begins to pace. He begins to talk to himself. Sometimes Jacob pauses and looks up, seeing what the symptoms forming in the child standing before him.  
“Can stop,” Ryan says.  
Jacob pauses, wondering if his brother is as uncomfortable as he is. “Do you want to?” he asks.  
“I want to know,” Ryan tells him. “But if you don’t.”  
This is where Jacob sees hope. Ryan still cares far more about others than himself. There’s flickers of the child he was, still shining through. Maybe that will go away with time. He can’t allow himself to think that.  
“I’ll keep reading,” he says.

“The medication is supposed to be helping him,” Jacob says irritably. “I’m not seeing any help. He’s only getting worse.” He looks over at Ryan, staring at something only he can see, muttering to himself while he twists his hands and taps his feet. Every once in awhile, he’ll laugh softly.  
“This is a progressive disease,” the doctor tells him. “He will get worse. The medication will keep it under control, though. It would be worse without it.”  
“I don’t see how that’s possible,” Jacob scoffs.  
“You can try taking him off the medications if you really want,” the doctor relents. “It would be better to do so now if you do--if he’s on it awhile and then stops suddenly, there’s the chance it would stop working.”  
Later that day, Jacob sits with Ryan to talk. “Do you want to try going without your medicine?” he asks.  
Ryan shakes his head. “No, I need it,” he says.  
“Just, it hasn’t gotten better since you started. What if it’s making it worse?”  
Ryan hesitates at that. “Kay,” he says after a moment of thought.”  
The next day, he doesn’t get any medication.  
He’s barely had enough time to get to school when Jacob gets the call to come pick him up. He hadn’t made it--he had gotten into a fight on the bus.  
Jacob retrieves him, and is immediately struck by the absolute falling apart. He won’t talk to Jacob, and he can’t keep still, rocking his whole body hard and tilting his head quickly.  
They get back, and it only gets worse. He runs around the house, screaming and banging on the walls. He opens the door and starts to run out, and Jacob has to hold him back while he locks the door. Not to be deterred, he goes to a window, smashing on the glass until it cracks, ignoring his bloody hands. He strikes at Jacob, hitting his face, biting his hands, whatever he can get at.  
He calls Aiden. “I can’t do this by myself,” he says.  
Aiden gets there as Ryan is breaking free again. “Shut the door!” Jacob shouts, and Aiden quickly obeys. Ryan shoves him aside and goes to open the door, but Jacob grabs him and hauls him back. Ryan screams and struggles, and Jacob winces as attacks land. “Lock it, lock it,” Jacob tells Aiden.  
Aiden does, then takes in the sight of his boyfriend. He has a bruise on his cheek, a cut above his eye, blood on his shirt--it looks like he went several rounds against a prize-fighter. It’s not even quite noon.  
Ryan snarls as he breaks free and runs at Aiden, scratching and kicking. Aiden, unprepared, falls under the attack. Jacob curses and grabs him again.  
“What the hell?” Aiden says.  
“He’s been like this all day,” Jacob says desperately. He has never been this bad. It’s been a week since he got back from the hospital, and he hallucinates, he fights, but right now, it’s like he’s not even human. The look in his face is that of a wild animal, nothing more.  
By three, they’re all covered in battle wounds, and the place looks like a natural disaster happened. Furniture is tipped over or thrown across the room, glasses are broken, toys destroyed. Jacob and Aiden finally forced medication and sleeping pills into the teenager, and he is passed out on the living room floor. Jacob and Aiden aren’t much better, collapsed against the couch, exhausted.  
“I think the medicine makes a difference,” Aiden comments.  
“You think?” Jacob shakes his head. “Fuck. What was that?”  
“Mania, apparently.” He looks over at the boy. “You know he’s never going to sleep tonight now.”  
“We will deal with that later.”

Jacob was stuck. He had to go out and no one is around to watch Ryan. Aiden can’t take any more time off work, and no way can he leave even Tommy in charge. Which means that Ryan has to come with him.  
It’ll be fast, he thinks. It won’t be too bad. Just a simple shopping trip.  
He should have known better when they walked in and Ryan started making faces and covering his ears. When they walked and the teenager held his arms close to his body, eyes focused straight ahead. When his breathing quickened and he started talking under his breath.  
“Hang in there,” Jacob said. It’s Ryan. He’s the calm and capable child. It’s fine.  
And then he reaches for something, and drops it at the sound of the child’s screaming. By the time he’s turned around, Ryan is on the ground, pounding his hands and feet into the tile floor, looking for all the world like a three-year-old having a tantrum.  
“What happened?” he asks, kneeling next to him. He makes the mistake of touching him, and Ryan shoves him away, pulling away as though he’s been burned. People are looking at him like he’s a child abuser, and he suddenly feels that same flame that he hasn’t felt since Mitchell was a small child and he was a single teenage father.  
“Hey, it’s okay,” he says desperately, but he has no idea what he’s doing, and it’s painfully clear. He doesn’t know what to do, how to deal with this. Ryan is the reliable one, the one to hold them together, to stop Jacob’s panic attacks and ease Mitchell’s night terrors. Now he’s the one falling apart and there’s no one better able to help him. “Stop. Ryan…”  
“Need some help?” a man asks, crouching next to him.  
“No,” Jacob says. Just leave us alone, he thinks. He’s unable to look at him. He wonders if this is some of what Ryan feels, this desperation to escape, even a glance will fill him up too much and make him explode. Like constantly walking the line of a panic attack, until it becomes normality, but never easy.  
People are staring, judging, and he wants to scream, he’s not stupid, not bad, he’s kind and sweet and smart, and you don’t see that. But he looks at the child, and he can’t see it, either, and yup, there’s the panic coming, and there’s no one to help.  
The man pulls something out of a pocket, a small ball that he squeezes in front of Ryan. “Want to hold onto this?” he asks in a soft voice. “It’s a stress ball, see, filled with sand so it’s nice and squishy.”  
Ryan, amazingly, stops screaming. He grabs the ball from the man and presses it between his hands, shutting his eyes. His body is tense and his feet continue to pound the floor, but at least his hands have something to do.  
The man is unperturbed. Jacob watches as he pulls out another toy, some kind of wheel on a string. The man pulls the strings, and the wheel begins to spin, lighting up in flashing colors. “How about this?” he asks calmly.  
Ryan blinks and his eyes lock onto the light show. He holds his hands out, body stilling. The man smiles slightly and hands the toy over. Ryan grabs it holding it close to his face in curiosity. He sits up, looks up at Jacob, then slowly pulls the strings.  
“Harder,” the man encourages. “Get it going.”  
Ryan obediently yanks on the strings, setting the toy in motion and lighting up. He tilts his head and looks at it, watching it quietly until it starts to die down, then pulling it until it starts again. “How?” he asks.  
That’s what Jacob wants to ask, but not about the toy.  
“You know, I don’t know,” the man says to Ryan. He looks up at Jacob, as though hearing his own unspoken question, and smiles. “My son has autism,” he explains. “You learn tricks.”  
“It’s not--” Jacob starts to correct him, but it doesn’t matter. It worked. He doesn’t know why or if it will in the future, but right now, Ryan is sitting calmly, completely entranced by his new toys. Sure, it doesn’t look great, a fourteen-year-old lost in a silly light-up toy, but it’s better than what was happening a few minutes ago.  
“Thanks,” Jacob sighs. “I--this is new, and I kind of suck at it,” he admits.  
“It’ll get better.” He nods at Ryan. “You can keep the sensory toys. Austin has a whole box of them.” He smiles at the teenager. “Hang in there, champ.”  
“Okay,” Ryan says distractedly, still watching the light show. Suddenly, he looks up at the man, and Jacob’s heart stops as he sees the child he knows and loves. “White light!” he exclaims. “It goes fast, so you see all the colors, because--because--like a prism.”  
“Wow, you figured that out from just playing with it for a minute? You’re pretty smart. Still want to keep it now that you’ve figured out the secret?” the man teases.  
Ryan hesitates and looks down, quietly pulling the strings again.  
“That’s okay. We don’t mind.” The man stands and nods at Jacob. “You hang in there, too, okay? It’ll get easier.”  
“Thanks,” Jacob says gratefully. “For...everything.” He looks at Ryan. “How about we get out of here?” Before another meltdown happens, he thinks, then pushes the thought away. They’re okay for now. When that’s getting rarer and rarer, he’s going to focus on that.  
Ryan nods and stands, not looking at either of them. Jacob is careful not to touch him as he guides him out of the store. By the time they’re back in the car, the teenager’s attention is starting to wane, and he’s beginning to fidget again, but for today, they’ve survived.

They’re trying to get a plan in place for Ryan’s return to school. Jacob wants him to come, and Aiden doesn’t argue. He’s old enough, and curious enough that he would want to know. Besides, this is still new even to them, and they have little idea what they’re doing. His dyslexia was easy enough to deal with--record some texts, get some extra time on tests, done. This is a whole different ballgame.  
“You need to try to sit still, okay?” Jacob murmurs to him as the teachers start coming in. The boy is rocking his chair, thumping the legs on the floor, and shaking his head.  
He looks at Jacob and frowns, attempting to still himself. “Sorry,” he says. Jacob puts a hand on his shoulder, but Ryan yanks away with a grimace.  
Aiden can already tell he won’t last the whole meeting, but he understands Jacob’s attempt at optimism.  
Ryan’s psychiatrist is the last person to enter. The boy thumps his chair a couple of times, then spurts out, “Sorry!” and hooks his legs around the chair legs to stop himself.  
The doctor smiles gently at him. “That’s all right, Ryan. How are you feeling today?”  
“Okay,” Ryan says, flicking his gaze away.  
“Well, let’s get started,” the district representative says. “We have all the tests results here. Would any of our teachers like to speak up as to their personal impressions?”  
“Ryan is one of the brightest kids I know,” Ryan’s science teacher jumps right in. “He’s been struggling recently, but I’d like to see him mainstreamed as much as possible--anything else would bore him.”  
Jacob has a small smile at that.  
“I disagree,” his history teacher says. Of course she does, he thinks--she was the unlucky one that got to witness his psychotic episode firsthand. “Look at the information we have. Failing grades in all classes, special and general. Low placement. Not to mention the behavior issues.”  
“But now we know what’s going on,” the first teacher presses. “We can figure out what needs have to be met, and what can be done to get there. It’s not a simple bad kid issue, like we were forced to believe.”  
“I think that’s all the more reason,” his reading teacher says. “There are obvious issues that need to be met and that will need to be handled for years. At this point, it’s clear it’s not a passing issue.”  
“He is a bright boy,” the math teacher says. “But I think the attention that would be required in a general classroom would not be acceptable. We have twenty other students. It’s enough of a struggle in the best of circumstances.”  
Aiden is quiet and thoughtful, listening to everything. He knows that these people are the ones that will have to deal with the day to day. He’ll input his opinion, but not until he has enough information to have one.  
Jacob, though, is different. He believes in his brother, and that’s the beginning and the end of it all. “That’s your job,” he says heatedly. “To take care of your students, whatever they need.”  
“Yes, and that’s my concern, that they won’t be able to.”  
“So Ryan has to just make do with second best because it will be too hard?”  
“That’s not what I’m saying--”  
Aiden looks over at Ryan, who’s begun rocking again, and tilting his head with a frown. “You okay?” he asks quietly. “Hang in there.”  
“I’m not,” the child says in a low voice. “Don’t.”  
“What is your opinion?” the school representative asks the doctor.  
“Mental illness can be very difficult to manage. No matter what, I would recommend an aide at all times--someone to help manage the poor functional issues as well as the violent episodes that have occurred in the past.”  
“Violent episodes!” The history teacher pounces on the phrase. She looks around at the other teachers. “We are not equipped to deal with that, and parents should not have to worry about their children having to deal with it.”  
“Sounds like you’re suggesting he just drop out of school entirely,” Jacob points out.  
The teacher hesitates just a moment too long. “I’m saying we need someone who can manage him, and that is not us.”  
Jacob starts to reply, when Ryan leaps from his seat. “I don’t want to!” he shouts out. He looks at Aiden with wide eyes. “I need to go out, leave, now,” he says in a rush of clanging syllables.  
Aiden stands and looks to Jacob, who is frowning in concern. “I’ll take him out,” he says. He knows Jacob will want to stay and fight.  
Jacob hesitates a moment before nodding his agreement. Aiden smiles reassurance and lays a hand on his shoulder, lingering a moment. Ryan is already at the door, head in his hands and bouncing on his heels, trying to keep it together for a few minutes more. He bolts out the door as soon as Aiden is near.  
The meeting wraps up, and Jacob, as far as he’s concerned, lost. Ryan will have to go to special needs versions of all his main classes, but electives will be mainstreamed. The teachers will send Jacob regular progress reports, and he’ll have an aide with him throughout the day. One of his classes will be replaced with therapy twice a week and social skills classes. Jacob doesn’t see it as a win, and he just hopes they can convince eveJacobne soon.  
Aiden is standing just outside the door, watching Ryan walk quickly down the hall, tilting his head nervously. He looks over as Jacob walks up to him. “He sure has a lot of energy,” he comments. “He’s been walking up and down the halls the whole time. Well, running at first.” He frowns. “Actually, I think he got mad, and wanted to leave before he did something bad, and walking around helped refocus that.”  
“That’s good, right?” Jacob says, watching the boy. “That he was able to stop.”  
Aiden shrugs. “I’d say so. What happened after we left?”  
Jacob scowls. “All kinds of accommodations,” he says. “He’ll only be in regular classes twice a day, and those will be interrupted twice a week to go to therapy.”  
Aiden nods. “Maybe it’s best. He still has to adjust, after all. If we start at a lower rung, he’ll be able to pick things up and impress them quicker, and then he’ll be able to move back, maybe even a little ahead.”  
“Huh.” He hadn’t thought of that. He shakes his head and gives Aiden a smile. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, you know.”  
Aiden grins. “I know.”  
“Jacob!” Ryan shouts, catching sight of him. He barrels back down the hall, only to skid to a stop a foot away from him, looking startled. There’s still a lot to adjust to, Jacob thinks painfully. That fear of touch is one of them. “Can we go?” he asks.  
“Yeah. I’ll tell you about the meeting in the car.”  
“You did great asking to leave,” Aiden tells him. “I know it was hard for you to sit, but you could tell when it got to be too much and asked to get out--that was great.”  
Ryan blinks and a slow smile inches across his face. “Okay,” he says. “Thanks. Okay.”  
Jacob reaches over and links a hand with Aiden’s, having never loved his partner more.  
“Excuse me?” He turns to see Ryan’s science teacher. “My name is Brandon Lane. I’m Ryan’s science teacher. Or, was, I suppose.”  
“Thanks for standing up for him,” Jacob says.  
Brandon makes a face. “Little good that it did. But that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” He looks at Ryan. “You’re pretty smart, you know. I’m going to miss teaching you. Would you want to come visit me once a week or so, after school? We can still do some science together, like an extra-special lesson.”  
“Really?” Jacob and Aiden ask, surprised.  
Brandon turns to them. “They keep talking about dragging other kids behind, but they don’t see that Ryan here is so far ahead of them, that’s not even a concern. You’re right, it is our job to teach every student, not just the easy ones. Maybe we’re both too optimistic, but I don’t think low standards will help anyone. If you’re all,” he looked back at Ryan, to include him, “okay with it, I would love to keep teaching him, in anyway I can.”

Ryan collapses to the floor, pounding his feet and screaming and thrashing and sobbing so hard he can barely breathe. “Let me die!” he screams at throat-tearing volume. “I just want to die! Killing me too hard stop it please!”  
Tommy pulls the younger kids outside the instant it all starts to try to play and distract them--Lilly in particular takes the breakdown hard, crying and asking what’s happening, a question no one can answer well. Aiden tries to get close to Ryan to calm him down, but flailing limbs strike out in every way.  
Jacob has been the only person safe so far. He talks to Ryan, tells him it’s okay, just calm down, and actually gets close to him. Then Ryan seems to see him and his face contorts in rage. He kicks out at Jacob. As the man stumbles back, he sits up and leaps to claw at him, and Jacob is so shocked, he can barely react.  
“Your fault, your fault!” Ryan screams. “I was fine! Let me go back, I was fine, your fault, hate you, your fault!” The words hurt more than the blows, stunning Jacob into mute paralysis.  
Aiden moves, pulling Ryan back, redirecting him, and the touch has him collapsing to the floor again, curled up and sobbing wordlessly.  
Jacob can’t get outside fast enough. He hasn’t had a panic attack in years, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he breaks that record today. Two weeks since the diagnosis, and he’s already had too much. The only thing holding him together is Ryan’s words and knowing he has it so much worse.  
Mitchell, surprisingly the only one appearing to be maintaining any kind of calm, finds him. “Jacob,” he says, “try singing. You know, like you used to.”  
Jacob has to think a moment before he realizes he means when Mitchell was younger and had night terrors. He scoffs. “This is a little more serious than being tired or scared, Mitchell. A lullaby isn’t going to help.”  
“No, but he loves your singing,” Mitchell insists.  
Jacob looks at him for a long moment, and Mitchell returns the stare. His strong-willed, confident, perfect little boy. Jacob stands with a sigh and goes back to the other room. It’s like walking through sand, heavy and trudging and long. He stands at the door for a long moment, watching his brother fall apart.  
Wanna die die please help me kill me die please  
Your fault.  
“Hush little baby, don’t say a word…”  
Though his voice is soft, Ryan stills almost instantly, heaving deep breaths and staring blankly straight ahead. Jacob raises his voice slightly, still low and gentle in a lullaby. He sits on the floor where he is, arms wrapping around his legs to keep them from wrapping around the child he just wants to hold more than anything. His own tears begin to fall, and he’s suddenly struggling to breathe, his hands shaking as he wraps his arms around himself.  
“Jacob,” Aiden says gently, kneeling next to him, and Jacob tells himself he has to calm down, Aiden can’t take care of all of them, and Ryan is right there and needs him, but that just sends him spiraling back into anxiety, and he bows his head to try to breathe and find the words to speak. “Breathe. It’s okay.”  
“I told you it’s my fault,” he finally manages to gasp amidst the sobs. “He’s hurt and wants to die and it’s my fault. He hates me--I do, too, I--”  
“Jacob.” Aiden’s voice is firm. “It’s the illness talking. You know that. He loves you. Even if he is upset now, he doesn’t blame you, not really.”  
Jacob shakes his head. “I do.”  
“I know. But that doesn’t make it true.”  
Jacob starts to speak again when a small voice drowns him out. He looks over at Ryan, who is sitting up and looking at the floor. “Sorry,” he says softly.  
Everything is gone in that moment. Jacob crawls over to Ryan, but the boy backs away, not looking at him. “It’s okay,” Jacob tells him.  
Ryan shakes his head. “Sorry,” he says again. “I didn’t mean it, Jacob, I’m sorry.”  
Jacob smiles at him. “You can mean it. I did screw things up, didn’t I? I’m the one who’s sorry.”  
“No.” Ryan looks up at him briefly before his eyes slide away and he begins to rock, holding his head in his hands. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says softly.  
“That’s right,” Jacob tells him. “It will be. I promise.”

He’s been really good about taking his medications. The doctor warned them that many people who are mentally ill eventually stop because they feel better, and because Ryan’s a minor, it’s a good idea for them to monitor him just in case.  
And then, like so much about his illness, that changes.  
Jacob gets out his medication and sets it beside him, expecting him to take up each one and swallow them easily. Instead, Ryan eyes them and pushes them away.  
Jacob frowns and pushes them back.  
Ryan snarls and shoves them so hard, they go flying off the table entirely.  
Everything pauses.  
Jacob stares at the child, that look of rageful defiance on his face again. Weren’t the medications supposed to help with this? “Ryan,” he says, struggling to stay calm. “You need to take your medicines. You know that.”  
Ryan shakes his head fiercely.  
Jacob gets some of the medicine out again, and holds out the handful to him. Ryan responds by slapping his hand away.  
Jacob grabs the hand and moves in--he saw the orderlies force the medication into him, he knows the moves. Ryan’s scream is a mix of pain and anger as he twists away and tries to escape, falling out of his chair in the melee.  
Jacob hesitates, checking to make sure he is okay, and in that moment, Ryan is up and running for his room. Jacob takes off after him, grabbing him and holding him down. Don’t hesitate, he tells himself, it’s for his own good. He holds the handful over Ryan’s mouth, the boy’s face screwed up in upset, waiting for a sign that he is swallowing the pills. He shouts when he feels a bite and starts to pull away--too soon, as Ryan twists up and spits, shaking his head in distaste and triumph.  
Well, he obviously can’t leave him alone in this state. Jacob scoops up the half-dissolved medications and forces his hand back over the child’s mouth again. Ryan twists under him and pounds the floor, and it’s all Jacob can do to keep a hold.  
Finally, he pulls away, hand sticky with residue but empty, and Ryan pushes him off and scrambles up, beginning to pace around the room as though searching for something. After several minutes, his movements start to slow, and Jacob feels comfortable enough to stand.  
“Want to go back to the main room?” he asks.  
Ryan glances at him uncertainly. “Don’t--sorry,” he says finally.  
Jacob gives a tired smile. “Just maybe don’t do it again, okay?”  
Ryan just looks at him, both of them knowing no promises can be made.

“I want to die, Jacob,” he says, head buried in his arms wrapped around his knees.  
“Why would you say that?” Jacob asks, probably too sharply.  
Ryan looks up, eyes dry. He hasn’t cried in months, even with his depressive swnigs. “I am already. Dead but not. It’s hell, and I can’t escape and I feel it and I can’t do anything about it and I just want it to stop!” he shouts the last word, practically shaking with the force of it.  
Jacob feels shaky, too. He doesn’t know how to respond to the words. “It’s okay,” he says, the lamest response ever. “The doctors know what’s wrong now, and they’ve figured out some medicine that will help you. You’ll be okay.”  
“No,” is all the child can say, before burrowing his face again and rocking slowly.  
Jacob reaches out to touch him, and Ryan’s fingers dig into his arms at the contact. “Don’t,” he says in a choked voice. “Hurts.”  
“I’m…” Jacob doesn’t know what to say, pulling his hand back. Sorry just isn’t good enough.

“Ryan!”  
The teenager doesn’t pay any attention to him, continuing to tear through the presents. Paper, cardboard, and pieces litter the floor.  
“Stop it! What are you doing?” He can’t help it--for the first time ever, Jacob hits him.  
Ryan blinks in surprise, looking up at him. Then it’s gone, and he resumes his destruction.  
Jacob grabs his hands and wrenches them over Ryan’s head as the child screams, wrestling him to the ground.  
“Sorry!” Ryan shouts. “I had to!”  
“Why? Why did you have to do this?” he demands. He knows he’s going a little crazy, can feel Aiden watching him, but he can’t help it. It wasn’t bad enough that it was ruined for Ryan, now Christmas has to be destroyed for all the other kids, too.  
“Sorry, had to,” Ryan repeats. His body thrashes uncontrollably, even as it is Ryan who screams, “I don’t want to be like this!”  
He is shaken by the words, and Ryan breaks free. Even as he screams out, “Don’t want to, don’t want to!” he begins tearing into the presents again, ripping apart a new stuffed animal for Lilly.  
Jacob grabs him and picks him up to carry him to his room. “Ouch, Jacob, stop!” the child shouts at the contact. He kicks and struggles desperately. “Jacob!” he screams so hard, it sounds like his voice is tearing. “Killing me, ouch, killing me!” He sounds terrified, like his brother really is killing him.  
Ryan might not cry, but Jacob does as he’s forced to leave his brother breaking down alone in his room, turning the key in the new lock on his door to keep him inside.  
He wipes his eyes and goes to assess the damage.  
Aiden holds the torn toy and looks up at him. “I--” he begins, then clears his throat. “I think it’s mostly salvageable,” he says with an optimistic smile. “A few things are broken, but it’s mostly just scuffs and smashed packaging.” He attempts a laugh. “Thank god for all the plastic nowadays, huh?”  
Jacob can’t find it in him to even attempt amusement. Silently, he begins gathering up the shreds to try and piece together a broken Christmas.

Jacob opens the door. Ryan is pacing quickly, hands twisting as he talks softly to himself. He watches the boy for a minute. “Do you want your presents?” he asks quietly, holding a handful up.  
Ryan looks over at him. He strides over, and Jacob should know what is coming, he should know. Ryan snatches up the top present and throws it to the ground. He drops down and begins tearing the pages out of the book. Jacob can only watch numbly.  
Maybe, he thinks, carrying the recordings to place them on the bookshelf with the other ones Ryan already has.  
“No!” the teenager screams, shoving him aside and grabbing the recordings. He throws them all, new and old, to the ground and smashes them. He catches some in his hands and tears them apart.  
“Ryan!”  
The teenager’s hands shake as he stares sadly at his destruction. He drops the remains of the recordings and puts his head in his hands, talking quietly to himself as he rocks on his heels.  
Jacob reaches for the pieces to clean up.  
“Don’t touch!” Ryan screams at him.  
“I was just--”  
“Don’t touch!” Ryan shoves him, pushing him over. He shakes his head and twists his hands. “Don’t touch, don’t touch,” he repeats quietly, as though trying to regain control of himself.  
“It’s okay,” Jacob says, standing. He feels so helpless in the face of this monster. He’s used to being the golden child who can do anything. He’s used to be his little brother being the cheerful, helpful best friend. But right now, they are both completely and utterly powerless.

He swore at a very early age that if he ever had kids, he would never them. Not even a light spanking or a teasing slap on the wrist. His father had beat him for years, so often and for so long, that he had taken the first chance he’d gotten and escaped with his brother. He had been a teen father taking care of a baby and a younger brother, and he had never once considered going to his sole parent for help.  
Too many years of being used as a personal punching bag had left too many scars. No matter what, he would never hit his kids. On second thought, just to be on the safe side, he would never have kids. Who knew if that mean streak was genetic.  
Well, that second part didn’t work out too well--he now has, to all intents and purposes, four kids. All he can do is hang onto plan A.  
It shouldn’t be so hard. After all, he knows what it’s like to be hit and abused, to never be completely scar- or bruise-free. He loves his kids far more than his own father could ever have loved him, easy.  
Except one of his kids is screaming and hitting and will not listen to him. He and Mitchell are wrestling on the ground, only there is no play about this. Ryan has Mitchell pinned and is digging his fingers into the younger boy’s arms so hard there will be ten small circles of bruising later. He grabs Ryan and pulls him off, and Ryan hates to be touched, so he yanks away, hard.  
There’s a popping sound that scares him, and he lets go.  
Ryan’s right arm hangs limply even as he lifts his left one to twist his wrists. There is something wrong in the set of his shoulder, and Jacob curses as he makes a mental diagnosis. “Come here,” he says, reaching for him.  
Ryan backs away, shaking his head. “No!” he shouts, his new favorite word, and dashes off.  
“Aiden!” Jacob calls. He pushes away all feelings while he deals with this. He glances at Mitchell, who is sitting up and rubbing his arms, trying not to cry from the pain. “You okay, Michun?” he asks.  
Mitchell nods. “I hate him,” he says.  
“He doesn’t mean it. You know that.”  
“Yeah, he does. Or else why would he do it?”  
How do you explain the evils of mental illness to a ten-year-old, even one as brilliant as his son? He’ll have to think of it later--right now he has a dislocated shoulder to get set.  
Ryan screams all the way to the hospital, and the doctor doesn’t understand. “Come now,” he says. “I haven’t even done anything yet.”  
“It’s not the pain,” Jacob tries to explain. “Believe me. It’s being touched that he hates more.”  
Ryan pulls away from the doctor, and he doesn’t even seem to notice his non-functioning arm as he tries once again to escape.  
“Ryan!” Jacob shouts. He cannot take this anymore. He is terrified for his kid and worried about the others, and this is only the beginning of a very, very long road. It’s been a month since his diagnosis, and things just keep getting harder. The doctors said that this is a lifelong condition—he cannot imagine decades more of this. He grabs Ryan, and the child falls to his knees, crying at the contact. Jacob ignores it. “Stop!” he grinds out, shaking him roughly. “Let the doctor fucking fix this.”  
Ryan doesn’t look at him, but his screams die away. He is silent, even as his whole body tenses and he bites his lip so hard it bleeds when the doctor forces the arm back into the shoulder joint. The doctor puts it into a sling and Ryan just sits there, completely checked out, as he gives them instructions to help it heal.  
Jacob watches Ryan, and all he can see is himself as a child, terrified to even speak in the presence of his father for fear of what will come.  
It only gets worse when they come back a week later. Ryan cannot stop moving enough to rest his shoulder, and it shows. The doctor warns them that if he doesn’t let it heal properly, it can lead to disability later on.  
He doesn’t even see Aiden when he returns, doesn’t hear Ryan’s screaming in the background. They got back home, and he held it together, and then Ryan started trying to fight Tommy and Jacob grabbed him, and he realized how badly he wanted to hit him just to make him stop, and that was it, he couldn’t handle it.  
“Jacob?” Aiden says, noticing his shaking. “What’s going on? Why…” He pauses, looking at Jacob’s lowered eyes. “Jacob?”  
Jacob can’t talk. He’s trying, he really is. He is sitting on the floor of their room, unable to control his body even enough to stand. He was telling himself to pull it together, the kids needed him to hold it together, but he long since passed the point of thought. He can’t even see the shaking that he feels, can’t think of what it means. He hears Aiden’s voice and it’s a small light in the darkness, and he hates the worry he hears, knows he’s the cause of it, and while it’s more anxiety on top of what’s already breaking him, it’s also a rope to grab onto.  
“P…” he tries to explain, but it is not coming. He takes a breath to try again, but he can’t even get enough air. He can’t even breathe right, he’s so fucked up. He holds his hands up, spreads his fingers wide helplessly, pleading with Aiden to understand.  
“Panic attack?” Aiden guesses.  
He nods in relief, though he doesn’t know if Aiden can even see it, considering the way his whole body is already shaking. He hasn’t had an attack like this in years.  
Aiden curses and leaves the room, returning with Ryan’s anxiety medication. No, Jacob thinks, but the blackness is closing in, and he can hear Ryan’s screams now, and not only can he not help but now Aiden is having to deal with him again instead of the kids or himself he’s a horrible brother horrible parent horrible boyfriend  
Next thing he knows, there’s water filling his mouth, and he starts to choke, the burning waking him up.  
“Sorry, sorry,” Aiden apologizes, wiping his mouth because Jacob doesn’t even have enough control over his own body to do that. He tries again, pressing the medication into Jacob’s mouth, slowly tipping in just a sip of water to help it slide down his throat. He touches Jacob’s face, hair, whispering over and over that it’s going to be okay, I love you, everything’s going to be okay.  
Finally, finally, Jacob can breathe, and then even talk. “‘M ‘kay,” he mumbles. “Kids.”  
Aiden nods. “They’re fine. Ryan’s not happy, but he’s in his room throwing a fit, so considering, things are okay.”  
He nods. Considering. This is how they are defining ‘okay’ now, only one child breaking down.  
“You want to tell me what that was all about?” Aiden asks, gesturing to him.  
“I hurt him,” Jacob says. Okay, stick with short sentences and he might just manage. “Ryan. Grabbed him, he pulled. Shoulder.”  
Aiden nods. “Yeah, it got dislocated, but you got it fixed.”  
“My fault,” Jacob says. “And today--wanted to hit him. Stop him. I’m just like my--” Here comes the blackness again, the shaking, he can’t breathe--  
Aiden grabs his arm and shakes him gently. “Hey, hey, no, we’re not doing that again,” he chastises, sounding too panicked to be really joking.  
“Like my dad,” he manages to choke out. Like the man who called himself their father. Who beat Jacob for as long as he could remember, who almost killed him when he found out Jacob was going to be a father, who Jacob finally escaped the day his son was born…except, maybe he never would, because that mean streak was inside him.  
Aiden pauses, then shakes his head. “No,” he says simply. “You are nothing like your dad.”  
“Hurt him,” Jacob insists. “And want to hurt him again. God.”  
“It was an accident,” Aiden insists. “He pulled away. And you were trying to help your kid, don’t forget. Ryan is sick and was hurting Mitchell, and you were just trying to stop him. You weren’t just hurting him because he was being a little loud or slow. And the behavior causing this? Would drive anyone crazy. You’re doing great, seriously. It is not your fault. You wanting to make him stop, that is not hate or anger, that is worry.” He gives him a small smile. “Okay, maybe there’s a little anger, I get angry with him sometimes. We’re tired and worried, and we get pissed at the disease for what it’s doing. But I know that if you ever did hurt him, well, you would rather die. You wouldn’t do it just for fun, and you would never forgive yourself. Jacob,” he says again, firmly, “you are not your dad.”

“Stop it!” Mitchell shouts.  
Ryan reaches across the table and shoves him. Jacob looks up, ready to leap into action, but it seems calm for the moment. You know, relatively speaking.  
“Don’t provoke him, Mitchell,” Aiden says.  
“I can’t do my homework when he’s moving around like that,” Mitchell protests.  
“He can’t help it.”  
“Yes, he can! He did before!”  
Ryan stands and starts to go over the table to hit Mitchell. Jacob stops his work and goes to grab him just in time. Ryan stamps his feet and shouts his protest.  
“Calm down,” Jacob says tiredly.  
“It’s different now,” Aiden tells Mitchell. “You know that.”  
“You just like him more!” Mitchell shouts, cries blending in with Ryan’s screams. “You never punish him! Even though he’s always bad!”  
“He doesn’t mean it. He’s sick.”  
“Be nice, Mitchell!” Lilly adds her own voice to the mix, standing up to defend her brother.  
“I hate you all!” Mitchell shouts. “I wish he was dead!”  
“Mitchell!”  
“Go to your room!”  
“See! Punish him!”  
“Shut up!”  
They all stop and look at Jacob when he shouts. He never yells at his boys. Ryan runs to his room and slams the door, and his pounding on the floor is the only sound. Lilly immediately runs after him, and Aiden is torn between going after her, dealing with Mitchell, and focusing on Jacob, who is holding his head in his hands and taking big, shaking breaths, hands trembling.  
He goes to Jacob. “It’s okay,” he says softly. “We’ll get through this. We’re all still adjusting. It will get easier.”  
Mitchell frowns, looking at them. “What’s wrong with him?” he asks.  
Oh, Aiden thinks, blinking in realization. He doesn’t remember. “Anxiety attack,” he explains. “He used to get them a lot when you were younger. It’s been awhile.” He rubs Jacob’s back comfortingly as he speaks.  
“I’m okay,” Jacob says, but his voice is strained and he doesn’t look at them.  
Mitchell watches him for a moment, then hangs his head. “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s because I was fighting with Ryan, isn’t it?”  
Jacob shakes his head. “Not--”  
“There’s a lot going on,” Aiden rescues him. “He’s worried about Ryan, and he knows that the whole thing is hard on eveJacobne. No, your fighting doesn’t help, but you’re a child, you shouldn’t have to watch everything you say and do, either.”  
Jacob takes a breath and finally manages to lift his head. “I’m just a basketcase, anyway,” he weakly attempts to joke.  
Aiden looks at him and takes his hand, understanding the weight of the story behind the words.

Aiden tells him over and over that he’s got this, don’t worry, he’s done it before, but Jacob still worries. It’s the first day of school vacation. Things are crazy enough in the afternoon, when all the kids are home. A full day seems impossible to get through without some kind of disaster. Aiden’s taken care of his family before, and Jacob would tell anyone that he was better at parenting than he is, but that was before mental illness entered their lives, and that’s a whole new and different thing.  
He’s at work for one hour, and he tells himself that he can make it the rest of the day, but that thought is immediately followed by, No, I really can’t.  
His good status is wearing thin. His supervisors grant him the time off, but it’s clear they are starting to regret taking him back, and they reduce his hours for the next week. He doesn’t care. That’s what he’d want, anyway.  
He remembers what seems like forever ago. He had escaped his father, found a man he was crazy about, blended a family until the seams were non-existent. He’d finally gotten his GED and a job and started college. Life was finally amazing and on the right path.  
So much for that. Now he’s quit school, probably for good, his family is falling apart more every day, and who knows what will happen with this job.  
He forces a bright smile when he sees Aiden, but the other man is not swayed.  
“I took the day off,” he explains.”  
“Jacob,” Aiden says, rubbing his temples in frustration. “You are going to get fired. Going to pick Ryan up all the time--”  
“What, am I supposed to leave him when he’s upset at school?”  
“--and now this. I know they like you and you’re one of their best workers, but that won’t get you out of everything.”  
“You make it sound like I’m taking a day off just for fun,” Jacob snaps. “I want to take care of my family, is that so wrong? It should be a good thing.”  
“I can take care of things for a few hours. What we need is money to actually take care of things. We need you to have a job and help us that way.”  
“You’re doing well with your illustrations--”  
“It’s freelance, and nowhere near enough to cover everything. Believe me, I know, I fucking did it!”  
“Do you want me to go back?” Jacob demands. “Because I will. I’m sorry I was worried about you and wanted to make sure things were okay.”  
“God--Jacob!” Aiden shouts, making a scream of frustration. “You’re here, so whatever. Just think next time, okay?”  
“All I do is think,” Jacob says.  
Aiden just shakes his head and turns away. It’s then that they notice they have an audience.  
“You were fighting,” Mitchell says, biting his lip in worry.  
Aiden forces a smile on his face. “Just a little,” he says. “Grown-ups do that sometimes. It’s okay.”  
“Not you guys.”  
Aiden hesitates. He realizes he can’t argue. Before this all started, in the years he and Jacob were together, they had fought only a handful of times. Now, it seems like they’re arguing over something every day. He sighs and looks at Jacob, putting on a smile. “Sorry,” they say together, then both smiling at the coincidence. Maybe, Aiden thinks, it really will be okay.

Three days in to their break, and eveJacobne’s temper is wearing thin. And they’re not even halfway through.  
Aiden is calming an upset Lilly after Ryan pulled her hair, and Jacob is keeping an eye on his brother to make sure that’s the end of it when there is a knock on their door. The adults look at each other, then Jacob looks at Ryan in his room, contentedly talking to something unseen while drawing in one of Aiden’s sketchbooks. It looks calm enough right now, so he goes to answer the door.  
A woman in a business suit with a clipboard is standing there. “Hello,” she says professionally. “I’m from Child Protective Services. I’m here about a call from a neighbor about some disturbing sounds lately.”  
Ryan’s screaming, Jacob realizes. Or the other kids screaming from his fights. Come to think of it, their home does sound like a war zone lately.  
“Sorry,” he says apologetically. “My brother has a mental illness. It gets a little crazy sometimes, especially now that they’re all on vacation from school.” He offers a smile, hoping that will be enough.  
She only blinks at him. “Mm. Would you mind if I come in and take a look?” It’s not really a question.  
“That’s not a great idea,” he warns. Things are semi-calm right now, but the kind of calm that is waiting for an explosion. The kind of explosion a stranger entering the house would guarantee.  
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist,” she says. When he starts to protest again, she cuts him off. “I could come back with a warrant, and that would not be a good start, I’ll let you know. If we think any children are in danger, we would be within our rights to take them to another home.”  
There is no other home, he thinks viciously. He steps aside. She can see from herself, and when things blow up, he won’t worry about her.  
He follows her inside, and when Aiden gives him a confused look, he shrugs. “Child Protective Services,” he says. “She insisted on coming in and wouldn’t take no for an answer.” The woman glares at him at that. He is not endearing himself to her.  
Aiden smiles and stands, picking Lilly up as she sniffles and clings to him, staring at the woman in fascination. He shifts the girl on his hip to hold out a hand to the woman. “Pleased to meet you,” he says pleasantly. “My name is Aiden Matsuda, and this is Lilly Matsuda, my daughter.”  
“Hi,” Lilly says.  
“Jacob’s son Mitchell and my brother Tommy are out at the arcade.” He gives her a knowing look. “School vacation, eveJacobne’s going a little stir-crazy, you know.”  
The woman actually smiles at him. Jacob shakes his head. Aiden can charm anyone. It’s kind of amazing.  
“I just need to take a look around and make sure that everything is up to standard,” she says to him. “We received a few calls about some concerning noises, screams as though children were in pain and such. I just need to take a look and make sure everything is all right.”  
“Of course,” Aiden agrees. “I’m sure Jacob told you, his brother—whom he is the legal guardian of, by the way—is mentally ill, and that causes some problems, but we’re dealing with it as best we can.”  
“I understand. It’s just my job to make sure that the best you can is good enough.”  
Aiden’s smile flickers at that, and Jacob feels a sense of vindication.  
His gaze shifts as Ryan comes out of his room to see what the noise is about. The boy’s eyes immediately lock onto the strange person, and he can see the trouble brewing right away. All his wishes for the woman to receive a comeuppance disappear. He doesn’t want this for Ryan, he immediately takes it all back, no.  
The woman looks at him, not seeing what Jacob can see. “Hello,” she says. “And what is your name?”  
Ryucihi looks at Jacob. “Who is she?” he demands.  
“It’s okay,” Jacob tells him. “She’s just visiting to check on you guys.”  
He looks back at the woman and rolls his wrists. “Okay go,” he says antagonistically.  
“Ryan,” Aiden says warningly. “Be nice.”  
“Why don’t you go back to your room and draw some more?” Jacob offers. “I’ll go with you.”  
“That’s fine,” the woman says, clearly sensing discord. “I’d like to talk to Ryan here.”  
“Don’t wanna talk,” Ryan growls.  
She seems surprised by this response and tries to cover it. “I’d like to talk to you--”  
He lashes out at her, hitting her in the stomach hard enough that she drops her clipboard. Jacob grabs his arm, and Ryan shouts at him to let go.  
“Don’t hit,” Jacob says.  
“Enemy,” Ryan shouts, pulling away to kick at the woman. She winces as his foot connects to her shin and she quickly takes several steps back. He snarls animalistically at her, hands shaking badly in his desperation to defend his family from this perceived threat. Jacob thinks he hears a word in the growls, but the monster inside has too strong a hold to be sure.  
In minutes, they’re on the floor, Jacob trying to pin a screaming, thrashing wild teenager. He looks up at the woman challengingly, and sees a stricken face gazing at them. It doesn’t help that Lilly is squirming in Aiden’s arms, wanting down to help her big brother.  
While Jacob struggles to keep control, the woman talks to Aiden, and he just wants to scream at her to leave already. Finally, finally, she does, and almost instantly, Ryan is quiet again, a shaking in his hands the only sign that there had been any kind of upset. “Gone, safe, good,” he says contentedly. “Kay, Jacob, kay?”  
“Yeah,” Jacob says, leaning back in exhaustion. “It’s okay now.”  
Ryan nods in satisfaction and goes back to his room to continue drawing. Lilly looks at Aiden and then runs after him, their earlier incident completely forgotten.  
“She said that we were okay for now, but someone would be coming by to follow up at some point,” Aiden tells him.  
“When?”  
“She couldn’t say. It has to be a surprise so we can’t set up anything.”  
Jacob sighs in disgruntlement.  
“I know, but she’s just doing her job.” He shrugs. “She actually wasn’t too bad. She told us to create a file of Ryan’s medical history, any medications, doctor’s information, school reports, that kind of thing. Then if something like this happens again, we can just show people that, and it will help everything go more smoothly.” He winces. “We might have a lot of this to look forward to in the future.”

The child has been surprisingly quiet. If only they lived in a world where that was okay. Instead, Jacob’s starting to get worried, especially since he’s not listening to his recordings or doing work, just staring at the wall, and has been still and quiet for almost twenty-four hours.  
“Ryan,” he says on a whim, “look at me.”  
The boy is nonresponsive.  
He takes a risk and grabs Ryan’s face, turning it to force him to look. Not only does he not react to the contact, his eyes are distant, as though he is staring right through Jacob.  
Jacob curses softly. He feels Ryan’s face, the burning heat of it. “Okay, I’m going to take you to the hospital,” he says. He pulls him to his feet, the teenager following compliantly. He seems completely in his own world, leaving just a body behind. Even the threat of the hospital isn’t enough to pull him out of it--he hates the hospital with a passion, and normally the word alone would send him into tantrums.  
At the hospital, they tell him that the fever can increase the hallucinations, pulling him more fully into his other world. Once it breaks, he should be fine. Little consolation.  
Except that later that day, he starts waking out of it, and they almost wish for the catatonia. He wakes up in the middle of the night, pacing undressed and babbling, burning up. Jacob pulls him back to his room and sits with him as he screams and thrashes until he falls back into an exhausted sleep.  
Jacob can’t leave him alone for five minutes--he either starts undressing, wandering around in a blank state worse than sleepwalking or screaming and lashing out. He has long lost sense, words degenerating into gibberish that leave them helpless to make him feel better. He screams at the top of his lungs, drumming his feet on the floor or the wall, dripping sweat and tears. He’s hot, and in pain, and medication does next to nothing that they can see.  
Every so often, he collapses into sleep, and one of them sleeps while the other watches in case he woke. It’s the only quiet, but just as disquieting in its way--he sleeps like the dead, and his burning fever seems to make that all too possible.  
But…he’s still, and Jacob treasures the moments, watching him, touching him loving him. He’s sick, but he’s not ill.

Jacob wakes to noise, so familiar, he has to stop for an uncertain moment, unable to believe his ears. He goes to Ryan’s room, where he is quietly listening to one of his recordings. Except for the slight rocking, it could be a moment from long ago.  
He just stands in the doorway for a moment, unable to move for fear of breaking this spell of normalcy. Ryan seems to sense him, though, looking at him with almost clear eyes. He reaches a hand out--not a thrust to push him away, but reaching grasp, as though for once desperate for touch. How can Jacob deny it?  
He goes in a daze to the boy, sitting behind him and wrapping his body around the teenager like a protective outer shell. (If only.) Ryan leans into him comfortably, head against his chest, falling into him like it’s natural, like they’re two parts to a whole, finally rejoined.  
Jacob rests his head on top of Ryan’s--it’s so easy to fall back into comfort and ease. He doesn’t even care what he’s listening to, just breathes in the peace.  
The recording ends, and there’s a brief moment of silence. “Want another one?” Jacob asks in the hush. Ryan nods against him. He’s reluctant to give up the contact, feeling a strange ache as he moves. He’s hurried and careful, wanting to go back, terrified that he’ll turn around and the moment will be gone. He grabs a few recordings and moves back into position. Ryan selects the tape, puts it in, and settles back to listen.  
At some point, Aiden looks in, seeming just as surprised as Jacob had been. Ryan gives him a passing glance before returning to his recording. Jacob smiles and gives a hushing gesture.  
Okay? Aiden mouths.  
Jacob nods excitedly. Yeah, he replies in joyful surprise.  
Aiden stands and watches them for a moment, drinking in the sight. Finally, he reluctantly steps away.  
They sit together for several hours of silent contentment. Jacob started to doze, resting gently against his brother, a smile on his face.  
He’s jolted out of his doze as Ryan shifts, replaying a section of the tape over and over, squirming in his grasp. He tenses, grip tightening, and Ryan makes a noise of discomfort, grimacing and pulling away, one hand pushing him back.  
“No,” he whispers. It’s strange, how his expectations of reality could have changed so quickly. A few hours of quiet and peace, and he already can’t imagine going back to the hell that has become their lives. “No, you can’t have him.” He grasps for Ryan, for this piece of heaven, grabbing at him and turning his face to him. “Look at me. Stay with me!”  
Ryan lets out an angry yelp--”No!”--and shoves him away. Tired of the tape, he lashes out, kicking it away. Jacob tries to hang on and save the player at the same time. He curses as the boy breaks away and bolts out of the room.  
He should go chase him, but he can’t. He doesn’t care. He can’t care. It was all lost, and he’ll never have it back. He hates mental illness, he hates his life for what it has become.  
He barely notices when Aiden comes in, consumed in his grief.


	3. Life, part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The family struggles as Ryan's mental illness grows worse.

Jacob gets the news his first day back.  
Aiden comes in from picking Ryan up from school, and everything seems normal. Mitchell is at a science club, Lilly is not doing her homework on the table--he tells Tommy to stop distracting her, but he smiles as he says it, half-teasing.  
Tommy looks up. “Jacob’s home early,” he says.  
“He’s sad,” Lilly adds. “Hi, Ryan.”  
“Jacob’s here?” Aiden asks with a frown. He’s missed so much work lately, too much. They have to be getting sick of it at the garage. “Get started on your homework,” he tells Ryan, who is making a beeline to his room.  
“Tired,” Ryan complains, rubbing his eyes. “Going to sleep.”  
He has been sick for the past week, Aiden figures, allowing him to get away with it just for today. He goes to his and Jacob’s room.  
Jacob is sitting on the bed with music playing, eyes closed, singing softly along with the CD. Aiden hesitates. He knows that although Jacob loves music, he rarely makes the time for it, and if he’s home when the kids are, that’s his first priority. He usually only sees Jacob cutting himself off with it when things are really bad--last time was the day Ryan went to the hospital.  
“Hey,” he says quietly, going up and touching Jacob’s leg.  
Jacob opens his eyes. When he sees Aiden, he takes the headphones off and sits up. “Everything good?” he asks.  
“He’s tired, but he made it through the whole day,” Aiden says with a shrug. “We’ll probably still be in the calm for a little while.”  
“Yeah,” Jacob says quietly.  
“So what are you doing home, anyway?” he tries to ask nonchalantly.  
Jacob lays back down and crosses his arms over his chest. “I was fired today,” he admits after a long moment.  
“Oh.” Aiden’s not quite sure what to say. He doesn’t think I told you so would go over too well right now.  
“I was missing too much time, and when I was there, half the time, I wasn’t thinking about the job,” he says. “Like today--anyway, I made a mistake, and I guess I just wasn’t worth the trouble anymore.”  
Aiden sighs and sits on the bed. “Okay. I’ll see if I can get some more work in the meantime. We’ll both start looking. We’ll manage for now.” He offers a slanted smile. “It might even be nice to have eveJacobne together more.”  
Jacob looks at him incredulously. “You’re not pissed at me?”  
“A little, but what good will it do? You’ve been under stress, so it’s not fair to just blame you. It’s going to be tough, but no tougher than some of the other stuff we’ve been through. We’ll be okay.”

Screaming--Aiden leaps from working on his illustrations and Jacob from his job search, and they both run into the boys’ bedroom.  
Mitchell hits Ryan, who shoves him to the ground and leaps on top of him. Jacob yells at him and pulls him off, and Mitchell screams again as Ryan kicks him. Jacob pulls Ryan in tight to restrain him.  
“Gotta kill him Jacob let me fight!” Ryan screams, fighting against the restraint.  
“No,” Jacob says firmly. “You don’t fight.”  
“Jacob!” Ryan rocks hard, screaming in pain and rage. He slams into Jacob’s face, and Jacob winces in pain but doesn’t let go.  
Aiden meanwhile pulls Mitchell into the other room. “What happened?” he asks.  
“He pushed me,” Mitchell says, eyes wide.  
He knows Mitchell is lying. When he lies, he keeps his eyes wide and unblinking, pretending innocence, and his eyes are practically watering with the strain right now. “Did you hit him or did he hit you first?” Aiden asks.  
“He did! You know he hits us all the time and wants to fight,” Mitchell replies earnestly. “He needs to go to the hospital.”  
Aiden pauses. “Why would you say that?” he asks softly.  
Mitchell hesitates. “Because he’s bad,” he attempts.  
“Mitchell. Talk to me, okay. Why do you want him to go to the hospital? Is it just because he hits you guys sometimes? Because you know he doesn’t mean it, right?”  
Ryan screams out a sobbing plea, and Mitchell looks to the wall dividing the rooms. He suddenly looks uncertain, and his fingers twitch in what Aiden realizes is one of Ryan’s nervous tics.  
“Mitchell…”  
“Just…” He looks at the ground. “You guys didn’t fight before. And we all had fun together. And now you and Aiden fight and you’re sad and we’re not a family anymore.” He sniffles and wipes at his eyes.  
“Michun…” Aiden touches Mitchell’s face, then hair, looking at him tenderly. “You’re right, we haven’t been doing a very good job of this, have we? We’ll try to do better. I’ll talk to Jacob, and we’ll have a family meeting, all of us. We’ll figure out something that works. But remember, Ryan is a part of the family, too. He looked after you and Lilly when you guys were little. Remember? That’s what you have to remember. He’s still that kid. He’s still your brother. He still loves you very much.”  
Mitchell nods quietly. “I’m sorry.”  
Aiden smiles. “It’s okay. Talk to us next time, though, okay? And how about you apologize to Ryan, once he calms down?”  
As if on cue, Jacob comes out, a bruise blossoming on his cheekbone. Aiden winces sympathetically. It seems Jacob can’t go a day without a new bruise or a bloody nose or something. “Leave him alone for awhile to calm down,” he says to Mitchell with a sigh. He always looks decades older after an episode.  
“I’m sorry, Jacob,” Mitchell says. “I shouldn’t have hit him.”  
Jacob shrugs. “No, you shouldn’t have. You know that makes it worse.” He hesitates, then adds, sounding resigned, “But don’t be afraid to defend yourself if you have to.”  
“Jacob,” Aiden says, gesturing to leave with him. Jacob frowns and follows him to stand outside the apartment door. Aiden shuts it and leans against it. “Mitchell hit him first,” he says.  
“What?”  
Aiden nods. “He wanted Ryan to leave because we were fighting. He thought that if Ryan started hitting them, we would take him to the hospital, and if he was gone, that we would stop fighting and things would go back to normal.”  
“Mi--” Jacob starts to call, going to the door.  
Aiden holds out a hand to stop him. “He was upset, Jacob. He’s twelve and upset and yeah, he did a bad thing, but he has a point. We need to do things differently. When was the last time we all had fun together, as a family?” He gets quiet and looks at the ground, asking tiredly, “When was the last time we went more than a couple days without fighting? This is not how it’s supposed to be.”  
Jacob sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “This is just...I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what to do. I hate fighting, but--” He shakes his head.  
“We need a break,” Aiden says. “Recharge our batteries so we can deal with this. This is too much, all at once. There’s this thing, a respite service--”  
Jacob looks up with a start. “Respite? Drop him off with a stranger and go off without him?”  
“Jacob, we need this. It will just be for a day.”  
“So much for being a family,” Jacob says and storms past him out of the apartment building.

It gets worse in the next months.  
“Hate you,” the boy growls, and even though Jacob knows he doesn't mean it, it sure looks like truth right now. “Kill you.”  
Jacob doesn't say anything. It’s not Ryan talking, it’s his illness, and Jacob’s not going to respond to that. Besides, right now, he has his hands full—literally—with trying to keep his brother restrained.  
Ryan shrieks and slams his head back into Jacob's face, catching him off guard. Pain blackens his sight causes him to let go.  
Ryan, freed, screams and takes off. Jacob staggers to his feet and runs after him.  
It’s an ordinary day now. Wake up before dawn because Ryan can't sleep more than a few hours straight anymore. Listen to the child's deluded ramblings, fight to get him to take his medicine, try to keep him from killing himself or anyone else, cry and hear his brother cry. If they’re lucky, they might get to school for a few hours, not like it does any good—Ryan can't focus on what the rest of the class is doing. On a good day, he'll just wander around the classroom mindlessly; on a bad day, Jacob barely gets back to the apartment before he has a call about the boy starting a fight or disrupting the class by shouting violent, psychotic words.  
How have they come to this? Jacob wonders. For a while, things had been good. It was him and his brother, one team, living at peace in the world, on their own and finally free. Then they had found their family, and it was wonderful, they were finding their place. And then the dyslexia popped back up with a vengeance, and the school work started sliding, and Ryan started acting out, and it had come out that he was freaking hearing voices, and it had all just continued to degenerate from there.  
He catches up to Ryan punching at the wall—good, at least the wall can't feel anything. He’s vaguely aware of his bloody nose, and Ryan's own now bloody knuckles, but more aware of his brother's distress as he grabs him and he squirms away, shrieking as if the touch hurts more than anything else. Jacob has taken to working out whenever he gets the time for this exact reason—Ryan is fifteen, growing and stronger, and someone has to be able to hold him back or someone will get hurt. Jacob can’t work. His only job is to take care of the child and just keep the other kids safe from him.  
The thought kills him. Keep the other kids safe from their brother.  
After about a half hour, Ryan calms down. As much as he can, anyway. He tilts his head back to look at Jacob, who is by now drained and exhausted—it’s not even nine a.m. He prays, while knowing that it probably won't be the case, that Ryan has burned through all his energy now and the rest of the day will go easily.  
“Bloody,” Ryan says, touching Jacob's face as though entranced.  
“Yep,” Jacob says tonelessly.  
“Me,” Ryan says, sounding pleased. He laughs and squirms against Jacob. He doesn't understand how the boy could both be happy at being able to hurt him and yet also so affectionately nuzzly. He leans sideways in Jacob's arms, tilting drunkenly. Jacob lets him fall, and he laughs that painfully manic laugh. Fuck, he still hasn't even gotten his medicine into him. Not that it seems to do any good, but who knew, maybe it would actually be worse without it.  
As he half drags the mentally ill teenager back to the living room, he wonders if it even can get any worse.

“Jacob, don’t go!” Ryan cries, clinging to Jacob tightly. Jacob can’t move with how tightly he’s hanging on to him. This is a kid that normally hates being touched at all.  
“It’s just for a day,” Jacob offers helplessly. “Then we’ll be back.”  
“No! Jacob!” Ryan sobs.  
“You’ll be fine. You’ll do some activities and play with some others, and before you know it, we’ll be back and we’ll all go home together.” This is killing him. Even just a month ago, he had been firmly against the idea of respite services. Now, it’s a last hope. It might kill him, but the alternative, keeping him around even another twenty-four hours, is little better.  
An attendant walks over to them. “We’ll have fun, Ryan,” he says cheerfully.  
Ryan shoots him a death glare and shoves him away.  
“Ryan, Jacob says desperately. He tries to move away and Ryan cries out in despair.  
“No!” Ryan falls to his knees in front of him, holding on to his legs.  
Another attendant comes over and starts to separate them. Ryan screams and swings at him with one hand, not looking, keeping his other arm around Jacob.  
Between the two attendants and Jacob, he manages to pull away. “I’m sorry,” he says, never meaning anything more as he walks away.

He counts the seconds until they can go back. They go to an amusement park, and he knows that Ryan wouldn’t last ten seconds in the noise and lights and crowds. He loves seeing Mitchell and Tommy and Lilly laughing and enjoying themselves, but all he can feel is betrayal.  
When they go back, he leaps out of the car before it’s completely stopped and runs to the center.  
“Jacob!” Ryan calls, running to him and grabbing him tightly again, and this time, Jacob holds him, too, content to never let go again.  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispers.  
“I’ll be good, Jacob,” Ryan pleads.  
“It’s not your fault. We just--” he stops. How is he supposed to explain this? We needed a break from you, you’re too difficult?  
“Don’t go, don’t go,” Ryan murmurs against him.  
“I won’t,” Jacob promises. “We’ll both go, let’s go home.”  
“Home home home,” Ryan says, dragging him to the door. Jacob smiles at him, glad to be back together.  
They get as far as the parking lot.  
Ryan suddenly shoves Jacob and falls to the ground. “Can’t go!” he says, shaking his head and twisting his hands.  
“What’s the matter?” Jacob asks in concern.  
The teenager snarls and kicks out at him. What happened? A minute ago, everything was fine.  
“Jacob, I can’t go,” he cries, covering his face.  
“Don’t you want to go home? And see Aiden and Mitchell and eveJacobne?”  
He shakes his head, then nods. “I can’t,” he says softly, and he kicks out at Jacob again. “Bad bad bad stay gonna hurt,” he chants flatly.  
Jacob kneels by Ryan, who promptly sits up and shoves him to the ground. “Ryan!” he shouts, grabbing his hands. They’re shaking.  
Ryan’s eyes are wide. “Have to...have to stay,” he says.  
Jacob suddenly understands what he’s saying. He’s worried he’s going to hurt the kids. Whether it’s because he thinks that’s why they left, or he’s angry and is worried he’s going to act on that anger, he is scared right now, and the way he’s lashing out at Jacob, maybe he should be.  
“Jacob?” Aiden saw them fighting and has come to see what’s going on. He looks at Ryan, then back at Jacob.  
“Give us a minute,” Jacob starts to say, when Ryan screams and launches himself at Aiden. He catches the older man by surprise and knocks him to the ground, pounding on his chest with raw anger.  
“Stop it, Ryan!” Jacob orders, yanking him off.  
“FaultfaultfaultenemyJacobstopbadenemy,” Ryan yells, words running together nonsensically.  
Aiden coughs, rubbing his chest and slowly standing. “Jacob,” he says softly, and there is a whole story in that.  
“It’s not--” he starts to say to Ryan. “We--” Ryan blames Aiden for Jacob leaving him, and Jacob wants to defend him, but he doesn’t know how. The teenager can’t understand that they had to. Jacob can’t even understand it.  
He looks at Aiden. “Go on home,” he says. “We’ll be back later.”  
“Jacob--”  
“Just go,” Jacob says, and there must be something in his face because Aiden nods sadly and goes back to the car.  
Jacob wraps himself around Ryan, pinning him. Ryan leans into him, and Ryan can feel him shaking. It’s like there’s two people inside him, the monster that wants to attack and the scared teenager that just wants it to stop.  
“Jacob, stay,” Ryan begs.  
“I can’t,” Jacob tells him. “You think you can go back home with me?”  
He shakes his head quickly. “Gotta destroy enemy, Jacob, please, stay.”  
“I can’t.” He brushes Ryan’s hair and the teenager jerks his head away. “You come home with me, or you stay.”  
“Jacob, stay…” He reaches up and touches Jacob’s face, eyes locking onto his. It’s a surprisingly tender moment in the middle of this insanity, the soft touch, the contact, the open expression. He can almost imagine that it’s him again. “Brother,” he says.  
Jacob suddenly understands. He feels safe with Jacob. He’s always been safe with Jacob. Jacob was the one who would take their father’s blows, who would protect his little brother at all costs. Now, that this illness is the one abusing him, he stills sees Jacob as the only one who can fight it. The only one who can save him. Even the hospital can’t give him that.  
“Is everything okay?” One of the attendants has come out to them. “I noticed you’ve been out here for awhile now…”  
Ryan squeezes his eyes shut and pulls his knees up to burrow his face against them, as though to prevent invoking the monster within.  
“I think…” Jacob swallows hard. “I think he might need to stay awhile longer.”  
“Is he having a psychotic episode?”  
Jacob starts to argue but Ryan nods against him. His hands flex into claws and spread, flex and spread. He’s fighting so hard to stay in control. That’s the worst part of it, that he knows something’s wrong.  
“Do you want me to call an ambulance?” the attendant asks.  
Jacob nods mutely. No, he doesn’t want to, but it seems he’ll need to. “We’ll go to the hospital,” he tells Ryan as the attendant goes back inside. “And they’ll help you. I’ll stay as long as I can, I promise.”  
“Sorry bad sorry…”  
“I know. I know.”

It’s early morning by the time Jacob gets back home. Aiden is waiting up for him. “What happened?” he asks.  
“I don’t know,” Jacob says tiredly. “He was okay at first. Then we got to the parking lot and...he was worried about hurting you guys. I think he was mad and sad about being left behind. He--” He debates about telling Aiden that the child blamed him, saw him as an enemy, but decides that won’t do any good. “I think being away, he realized what he was doing, and thought that the kids were safer. He always--” He chokes on a sob and puts his head in his hands. “He always worries about them more than himself.”  
Aiden steps forward, arms around him, like they were in the beginning, Jacob panicking about taking care of a child by himself and going to work and dealing with his past, and Aiden there, helping him even when Jacob pushed him away, because he knew he needed it.  
“He went to the hospital again,” Jacob chokes out. “He asked for it. He wanted me to stay, though, to help him, and I fucking couldn’t. I couldn’t.”  
“You do,” Aiden tells him. “You help him all the time, more than anyone could, more than you know.”  
“Not enough.”

The hospital releases him after just a couple of days this time, and they both have their reservations about the decision. But the fact is that the insurance won’t pay, and the hold is up, so they have no other options. The only good thing is when Jacob sees Ryan interacting with two other mentally ill children, and when he turns to see Jacob, for a moment, he can almost imagine it’s normal.

Ryan has his hands over his head and is struggling to breathe. “Ryan,” Jacob says, “what’s wrong?” Every day, he dies watching his little brother break down in another new way, while he stands by helpless. He can’t fix it, can’t offer comfort, can barely even get through to him. Sometimes, he would kill just to be able to say you’ll be okay and know he hears it, even if they both know it’s a lie. The boy is constantly being stolen from him and he’s left reaching out just to watch him slip through his fingers.  
“Ryan? Can you talk to me?”  
He shakes his head, but at least it’s a response.  
A sudden flash goes through his mind, like a burst of clarity. “Are you scared?” he asks. “Like so scared you think the fear will kill you?”  
Ryan looks up, eyes wide, fists clenched, an affirmation without words.  
“Okay.” Jacob’s hand hovers over him questioningly, and Ryan leans into the touch. He grimaces, but doesn’t move, as though desperately fighting the illness for even the smallest comfort he can get. Jacob rubs his back for a moment, then says in a calm, even voice, “Okay, I’m going to go get your medicine, okay? Hopefully, it will help.” Ryan makes a small, choked noise as his hand finally leaves him, and Jacob hurries to return with the pill bottle. He shakes one out and holds it to Ryan’s lips. “Can you swallow this?” he asks. “All right, great. You’re doing great, just hang in there.” He’s done it before, after all. “It’s an anxiety attack--remember, like I used to get? It sucks, and you feel like you won’t survive, but you will. I did, and I had them all the time. You’ll be okay.”

They should probably be more surprised that it hasn’t happened sooner. He starts fighting and screaming and punching the wall, and it’s nothing he hasn’t done before, but this time, he hits it in just the right way, and Jacob can immediately see that something is not right.  
His heart starts racing, and all he can think is a crack and pain and stop crying it’s not that bad and the next day and maybe if we’d seen it sooner. He looks away, taking deep breaths and trying not to fall apart.  
Aiden looks at him, stopping on his way to the child, torn between needs. “Jacob?” he asks in confusion.  
“Check his hand,” Jacob says through a strained voice. “Pretty--pretty sure he needs to go to the hospital.” He needs to get a grip, he tells himself. Ryan does not like the hospital, and he’ll need Jacob there with him.  
Aiden goes over to Ryan, telling him to calm down, he just needs to take a look at his hand. “Uh, I don’t really know what I’m looking for here, Jacob.”  
“Bruising,” Jacob says, keeping his back to them and staring firmly at the wall. “Swollen. Possibly fingers askew, but usually it looks more normal.”  
“Usually?” he hears Aiden murmur.  
Four times, he thinks. I had my hands broken four times, yeah, usually, Aiden.  
Ryan makes a sound of displeasure, and Aiden tries to hush him. “Let him look, Ryan,” Jacob says, cursing himself for not being able to do it himself. He was already in high temper, and now they have to deal with this.  
His hands are shaking, even clasped together. He feels like he’s going to be sick.  
“Jacob,” Aiden says. “Asymmetrical.”  
Aiden holding his hands, commenting that one hand’s fingers were shorter than the other’s. Jacob explaining the multiple times his father had broken them, feeling light-headed and breathless at the memories. Aiden kissing each finger and commenting lightly that he’s an artist, he likes things imperfect and asymmetrical, and suddenly, it’s not so bad.  
With the word, he manages a breath. “Okay,” he says quietly.  
“I can’t tell for sure, but there is something off,” Aiden tells him. “I’ll take him to the hospital just to be sure. Are you…?”  
“I can’t,” Jacob says regretfully. Too many memories, too close, even now. “Go. I’ll...be here.”  
“Will you--”  
“Yeah, just go,” he says in a rush.  
Aiden reluctantly nods, and drags Ryan out, screaming. It rips through him, and he knows there is nothing he can do, and it’s the last straw. He collapses into a crouch, head down, holding his knees, clasping his hands and flexing them and trying to breathe through cotton and telling himself it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.  
A crash of pain through his hand, and he can’t stop the crying. “Stop crying!” his father demands. “It’s not that bad.” But there is even a thread of worry in his voice, as though he’s trying to convince himself.  
Jacob can’t move his hand, and hisses in pain every time his brother jostles it by accident. Ryan has to help him get dressed the next morning, his fingers non-responsive and slightly swollen. He doesn’t even think about telling his father, but the man knows. He hits Jacob, grabs him roughly, and tells him to suck it up, he’s fine.  
He goes to school in waves of pain, and his brother is reluctant to leave his side. He makes it all the way to second hour, and a teacher notices that he’s not doing his work—he can’t hold a pencil. She calls his father, who doesn’t answer, and then the hospital, who tell him it’s broken, and why didn’t they come sooner.  
When Jacob’s father finally arrives, hours and calls later, he spins a story about Jacob practicing baseball and smashing his hand and refusing help. The brothers are too terrified of what they already know will be coming to argue. The doctors believe him. There will be no escape this time, either.   
“Jacob?” Mitchell asks in concern.  
He hasn’t had a panic attack since the kid was too little to remember, and he feels like he’s making up for it now. He can’t even focus on pulling himself together for Mitchell, he’s too busy just trying not to die--not even that, he’s too busy dying.  
It feels like hours later that it’s finally washing away and he’s coming out of it. He takes a shuddering breath and looks up. “Sorry,” he says, voice cracking from the stress. His whole body is exhausted and shaking. He realizes that the only people who’d know what happened to him are Aiden and Ryan. Mitchell wasn’t even born, and Tommy and Lilly were too young to be told, even if he didn’t want to keep it to himself and ignore it ever happened. “I--broke my hand when I was young,” he explains. “It was pretty bad.” Just thinking about it has the anxiety rising in him again and he puts his head back down and takes a deep breath in an attempt to keep it down.  
“It’s okay,” Mitchell says after a moment, clearly unsure how to handle his father falling apart before him.  
He’s feeling mostly okay by the time Aiden and Ryan get back, though he keeps finding himself flexing his left hand or clasping it as though checking that everything’s still good. He stands as the two come in, Ryan’s eyes half-lidded as he leans heavily against Aiden. “Is he okay?” He feels the flickering inside him as his body starts to shake and he tries to tell himself it’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.  
“Yeah. They had to give him some heavy sedation,” Aiden explains. “You know him,” he says with a small smile, “a broken hand gets no notice, but someone touches him, and that’s cause for a freak-out.”  
“Is anything…” He closes his eyes, trying to keep calm.  
“Broken wrist. They set it and put the cast on, and as long as he stops fussing with it, he should be out of it in a few weeks. Shouldn’t be a problem.” He smiles reassuringly, rubbing Ryan’s shoulders.  
Jacob nods. “I’m sorry,” he says, pained. “I just--”  
“It’s okay, I know,” Aiden tells him. “But he’ll be fine. This will be different, I promise. You okay now?”  
He looks over at Ryan’s casted wrist. He remembers wearing one similar, for weeks. Then the double cast, later, when he got two for one, the impetus for finally leaving.  
He touches his own hand again. All past now, he tells himself. And it will not happen again.

It’s finally time to get the cast off. Ryan has been barely hanging in there, and eveJacobne is ready for it to go. Unfortunately, that also means a doctor's visit, which is a trial in itself.  
The doctor brings out the saw and hasn't even turned it on before Ryan starts panicking, lashing out at the doctor with a snarl.  
He sees a weapon, Jacob knows, and thinks danger. "It's okay," he tells the teenager. "He's going to take that cast off--that'll be fantastic, won't it? It'll be over before you know it."  
Ryan makes a small noise, looking worried, and sits back down, fidgeting.  
"You'll have to sit still now," the doctor tells him, moving close again. He turns the saw on.  
Ryan yelps and lashes out, and the doctor only just gets the saw out of the way before an accident can happen. The doctor breathes an irritated sigh. "He has to calm down," he tells Jacob. "I could easily hurt him."  
Thanks for that, Jacob thinks with a scowl. Exactly what he needs to hear. He moves and sits down next to Ryan, looking at him seriously. "Ryan, listen to me. You trust me, right? I will not let him hurt you, okay? Trust that." He holds his hand out. "I know you don't like to touch, but you really have to sit still. If you absolutely have to do something, take it out on me. Blame me. I can take it. Brothers, right?"  
Ryan slowly puts a hand in Jacob's, grasping tightly.  
Jacob nods to the doctor to try one more time.  
The doctor moves in cautiously, ready to pull back at the first sign of distress. The saw turns on, and Jacob gasps as the hand around his own squeezes almost tight enough to break bones. He grits his teeth and bares it, though. Ryan's eyes are squeezed shut and his face turns away from the activity. A scream of pain can't quite be muffled. "It's okay," Jacob murmurs to him. "You're okay." It’s always hard not to reach over and lay a reassuring touch on him, but he knows that would only make things worse. But it’s clear that the fear and the stress of taming the monster inside is taking a toll on him, and the process seems to take ages.  
When it’s finally done, and the doctor smiles his approval, Ryan leaps up and begins pacing the room, shaking his head and fidgeting his hands with overflowing anxiety. Jacob quickly takes care of everything and gets the boy out of the office within minutes.

He goes to class, and sometimes makes it through the whole day. He isn’t anywhere near as vibrant as before, though. Jacob can understand the need for specialized education, but he can also see that it isn’t right for Ryan. He still struggles with the assignments, with increasing frustrations because he knows the work, he just can’t focus enough to do it. It isn’t unusual for a simple worksheet to result in hours of screaming and tears.  
One day, Jacob is called in to pick Ryan up early because the child is having a breakdown, having turned over a desk and started kicking the walls and teachers. Normally, Jacob would take it in stride, but the angry tears streaking the boy’s face and the violent shaking tell him that something is up.  
At first he doesn’t want to speak, which seems fair, being so upset. He puts on one of his recordings, and tries to listen to it, but keeps shaking his head like he does when the voices are being loud, and rewinding it, and jumping up to pace around the room. It’s painful to watch him struggling so hard for something he used to enjoy so much only to get nowhere.  
After about a half hour, during which he gets through maybe a paragraph, the boy yells and kicks the CD player, causing Jacob to leap up and rescue it before he does damage he would later regret. That earns him a few bruises before Ryan runs to his room and proceeds to tantrum loudly. He’s trying, though—Jacob can see how hard he’s trying. It’s an internal war with himself, and he’s sobbing all through it like each second causes another casualty. It breaks Jacob’s heart, all the more so because he knows there’s nothing he can do. If he even tries to get close enough to comfort, he’ll only end up making it worse.  
When the noise dies down, he waits a few more moments and risks going in. “Something wrong?” he asks, waiting by the doorway until he receives the approval to enter.  
Ryan doesn’t answer, his face buried in his pillow.  
He decides he can’t just stand there. He goes to the child’s bedside, placing a hesitant hand on his head. “We’ll figure it out, I promise. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”  
A muffled response.  
“Can you maybe tell me, not the pillow?” he attempts to joke.  
Ryan looks up. “I’m stupid,” he said. “And broken. And I might as well just die now because nothing’s ever going to change and I shouldn’t even hope.”  
Jacob is too stunned to speak for a moment. “Where did this come from?” he asks in quiet alarm.  
“I heard the teachers talking. One of them said she was killing time watching retards, and it was pointless because we couldn’t learn anything anyway, and they were just baby-sitting us until we were twenty-one and would go to a state home.” He looks up at Jacob with wide hurt eyes. “I don’t want that, Jacob.”  
“I know,” he says softly. He knows that, without this illness, Ryan would be taking advanced classes. He’d be doing something great with his life. Now—no. He’s not going to think that. The kid needs someone who believes in him. “But you know what? They’re wrong. All of them. They should not have said that, and you’ll show them that. You’ll go to college, and you’ll become a famous scientist. You’ll figure out what’s going on, and you’ll find a cure, and help lots of people. Just watch.”  
“No, I won’t,” he says stubbornly. “I won’t because I’m stupid and—and—“ He starts scratching at his arms, leaving long, bloody tracks, as though he isn’t even aware he’s doing it.  
“Hey!” Jacob says, grabbing his arms.  
“Don’t—“  
He pulls the boy in close, holding him tightly. “I know you’re hurt and scared. I know. But trust me, you are so much stronger and better and smarter than you give yourself credit for. You’ve always been way too hard on yourself. You’re still here, aren’t you? And you’ll stay here, and you’ll see. I’ve never lied to you before, have I?”

It starts with a fight at school. That’s not too unusual anymore, so he just tries to calm Ryan down and bring him home without too much of a meltdown. He is antsy on the bus, shouting out and shaking his head--it’s clear that the voices have a tight hold on him today. At one point, he gets overwhelmed by the people, and Jacob barely drags him off in time before he completely flips out and hurts someone. He’s torn between apologies and anger at the looks they get, and focuses on his brother.  
“Don’t want to no,” Ryan says. “Danger bad go fight--”  
“It’s okay,” is all Jacob can offer. He doesn’t know what he’s hearing, but it’s clearly nothing good.  
Ryan screams and lashes out at him, and Jacob pulls him into a tight hold. He can feel the teenager’s quick breath against him as he fights for control.  
When they get back to the apartment, he paces the whole place, constantly moving. His eyes are wide and scared. Jacob asks him what’s going on several times, but his voice is drowned out among the others. Ryan suddenly shouts and starts pounding on the wall, bloodying fingers and cracking plaster before Jacob can get a hold of him.  
Pacing.  
People walk by, and he runs to the window, and Jacob has a heart-stopping knowing that he will jump, just to get to them and hurt them, and he shouts out and pulls him to the ground, holding him tight. Ryan fights him, hitting him so hard, he knows they’ll be a spectacular bruise on his cheekbone later.  
He calls Aiden and tells him that it’s bad, stay away. Pick up the kids from school and take them to their grandparents’. He doesn’t want anyone to get hurt, and right now, there can be no guarantees.  
After four hours of alternating fighting and patrolling--he realizes that’s what going on when he catches Ryan’s murmuring of “safe protect fight okay okay Jacob protect”--the teenager’s on the floor, rocking, with his arms over his head, and Jacob thinks maybe it’s over.  
“You okay?” he asks.  
A nod, gaze fixed ahead.  
“Do you think I can call the others to come home?”  
Another nod, but this one is accompanied by a wicked smile, and his heart drops. He’s getting much too good at reading these little things.  
“Ryan. Why do you want them to come?”  
His motions take on a mania, and he laughs when he tells Jacob, “Die die kill them hurt them bad enemy kill!” He leaps to his feet and takes off, and when Jacob grabs him, he screams as though he’s dying and strikes out at him. A bite on the arm and another nice bruise on the shin is added to his growing collection, and he sees stars for a moment when he gets a headbutt.  
Ryan falls to the ground and turns his attack on himself, and suddenly there’s a whole new problem. Jacob pulls the child in tight, ignoring the squirming. “You’re okay, you’re okay,” he says softly. Helpless, he tries singing, and eventually, Ryan relaxes enough that he feels okay relaxing his grip and letting him leap up.  
Pacing. Pacing.  
It’s getting late, when the teenager finally collapses into sleep, and Jacob dares to call Aiden and tell him it’s okay, it’s over.  
“Wow, you look like you guys tried to kill each other,” is Aiden’s first comment.  
Jacob shrugs. “Probably not too far off,” he admits. He sighs and rubs his face. “Mind if I go take a nap? It’s been a hell of a day.”  
Aiden nods, looking at Lilly, hanging off him half-asleep, and the other boys, who aren’t doing much better. “I think eveJacobne’s ready to crash. I’ll stay up a little longer, just in case. I can work on some illustrations, anyway.”  
Jacob smiles gratefully and goes into the room, where he is asleep as soon as he lays down. Aiden puts the younger children to bed and settles in to work. He’s barely started when he hears activity, and gets up to see Ryan heading for Jacob’s room.  
“Hey, Ryan,” he says, catching his arm. “You need to let Jacob sleep a little bit, okay?”  
Ryan makes a noise of upset and rocks on his heels a little, hands twisting anxiously. He looks at the room, and pulls on Aiden’s grip. “Okay, okay, but let him sleep. You can see him, but he needs to sleep.”  
Ryan hesitates, then nods as he hurries into the room. He steps towards Jacob’s sleeping form, then stops and walks back to sit against the wall by the door, rocking slowly. Aiden hesitates, not sure if it’s okay to leave him alone or not. He decides to bring his sketchbook in to sit near Ryan to keep an eye on him.  
Several times over the next hour, Ryan gets up and walks out of the room, tilting his head and making sounds of distress. Aiden watches, ready to run after him, but after a minute or two, he returns and sits back down. The only problem is that each time he does, his rocking gets a little more frantic.  
“You okay, Ryan?” he asks, keeping his voice even.  
The teenager doesn’t seem to hear him. He stands and goes to Jacob, mouth moving but no words coming out. Jacob stirs, as though sensing his brother’s presence, and Ryan’s eyes widen and breath quickens. He starts shaking his head and making sounds of upset.  
“Ryan?” Aiden asks, standing. He can practically see the tension building.  
Ryan walks quickly out of the room, and Aiden follows him. He paces around the room several times, and then explodes. He screams in distress and starts shaking his head violently and then hitting himself. Aiden gasps--he’s never seen this before--and goes over to stop him. “Hey, stop, it’s okay, Ryan--”  
Jacob is there in an instant, flying from deep sleep to awake to alert in seconds. Ryan falls to the ground, knees pulled in to his chest, and rocking violently, screaming and pounding on his head. “Stop it, stop it, it’s okay, you’re okay,” Jacob tells him, grabbing his hands. Ryan yanks to free himself, stamping his feet on the ground. His eyes are wide in fear, his breathing coming in quick gasps.  
“Ryan, breathe,” Jacob says, and Aiden hears a thread of panic in his voice. “Talk to me, what’s going on? What are they saying?”  
Ryan shakes his head, mouth moving quickly but no sound coming out. His whole body is shaking, hands clenching into claws and then spreading painfully wide. He looks up at Jacob, eyes begging for help, and his hands reach up, seeking him--normally he shies from any touch, so even this is a cause for alarm.  
Now Aiden’s starting to panic. “Jacob, I think we need to go to the hospital,” he says. “It sounds like he was having a psychotic episode earlier, and then he barely slept and now--”  
Jacob pauses, taking a deep breath. “What do you think, Ryan?” he asks. “Do we need to go to the hospital?”  
Ryan snarls--clawed hands, ready to fight.  
“Okay, then I need you to talk to me. Can you talk to me?”  
He stutters for a few seconds, then screams and pounds his feet again, snarling.  
“Aiden?” Mitchell is there now, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “What’s going on?”  
“It’s okay,” Aiden says automatically. “Jacob?”  
Jacob sighs. “Yeah, I think so.”  
Aiden nods and looks back to Mitchell. “Are Tommy and Lilly up, too?”  
“Yeah.”  
“Okay.” Tommy is probably trying to keep Lilly calm, he thinks. “Go tell them that we have to leave for a little while. Tommy’s in charge until we get back. Hopefully it won’t be too long. Got that?”  
Mitchell nods. “‘Kay. Is Ryan okay?”  
“He’ll be fine,” Aiden tells him with a reassuring smile. “Just having a bad day, you know?”  
Mitchell seems to accept this and goes back into the other room with just a glance over his shoulder.  
“We’re going to the hospital now,” Jacob is telling Ryan. “They’re going to help you feel better.”  
Ryan snarls and thrashes, kicking Jacob in the chest with a force that knocks him back. Then he screams and bangs his hands into the floor, scratching at the ground so hard, his fingers bleed.  
Aiden grabs his hands, and Ryan fights the touch, biting his arm until Aiden lets go in surprise. By then, Jacob has recovered, and he’s immediately there to take over again. “Come on,” he says in a quiet voice, and Aiden is surprised by how calm he’s being. He tries to pull the boy up, but he’s fighting every inch. “Hey, Ryan, tell you what. We’ll go to the hospital so they can help you, okay, and I promise, I will not let them take you away. As long as you’re--as long as there’s no danger, I will fight them myself, and I will not let them take you. I promise.”  
Ryan looks up at him, then finally, stills his body enough to allow himself to be pulled up and helped to the car. Jacob climbs in back with him. As soon as Aiden starts it moving, he’s screaming again, pulling to go to the door as though to leap out, and Aiden is ready to brake hard, but Jacob is there, pulling the boy in close and whispering soft words. Ryan is shaking again, breathing erratic and switching from moments of silence to great gulps of air to quick short breaths.  
“Is he okay?” Aiden asks, looking back at them.  
“Panic attack,” Jacob tells him abruptly, and suddenly it makes sense. Jacob is staying calm because this is something he knows about. He’s out of his depth in a psychotic episode, but a panic attack is familiar--he can see it, remember it, and figure out a plan. It’s still not easy, but there’s a comfort in the familiarity.  
“Can you give him--shit, we didn’t think to grab his medicine.”  
“It’s psychosis, too, I think,” Jacob says. “At least it was earlier. He was worried about some kind of danger, so of course that would cause some anxiety. And you saw his voices, right? Shh, shh,” he murmurs to Ryan when the teenager cries out again, rocking so violently, he moves them both and even Aiden can feel the car shift. “The hospital can give him something and go from there, I guess.”  
They pull up to the hospital, and Aiden’s halfway to the door when he realizes he is alone--Jacob is kneeling by the car door, talking to Ryan, who is still huddled in the back seat. “It’s okay,” he tells his brother. “Look, you go in there, and you show them how strong you are--strong, right, you want to be strong?--and they’ll let us go no problem. They’ll make you feel better, and then we’ll be off to go back home. You just have to go in there and show them. Can you do that for me?”  
Aiden realizes that the child is scared, no, terrified. He’s obviously scared enough to allow and even seek out comfort from his big brother, and every time he has come to the hospital, he has been taken away for days. No wonder he’s having a hard time leaving the car.  
Jacob nods and pulls back to let the teenager out. He keeps constant contact with him as they all walk into the emergency room. Jacob sits them both in the closest available seats, rubbing his hands comfortingly and talking softly to him. “Aiden,” he says, “go to the receptionist and see if we can get something for the anxiety. Anything they have.”  
Aiden nods and is off. He returns several minutes later with a small pill. “It’s the lowest dose they have,” he said apologetically. “They won’t give him anything stronger without a prescription.”  
Jacob scoffs. “Better than nothing, I hope.” They both know how his body is with medication-- he seems to need twice the dose of another child his age, if not more. Jacob takes the medication from Aiden--it’s clear that Jacob may be allowed to touch him right now, but only Jacob--and holds it out to Ryan. “Hey, Ryan, this is going to help you calm down, okay? Can you take it for me?”  
Ryan bares his teeth and snarls, a war inside him. His body arches as he fights the simultaneous urge to fight and leave.  
“Come on, you can do it, I know you can.” He holds the small pill to the teenager’s mouth, pressing it in gently, and covering it until he manages to swallow. As far as taking medication goes, it’s relatively painless. Jacob smiles. “All right, that was great.”  
Aiden sits close to them, watching them. He feels so helpless, knowing there’s little that he can do.  
Ryan screams out and thrashes, unclear whether his aim is to hurt himself or the people around him.  
“What’s going on?” a male nurse asks, approaching them.  
“Psychotic episode, and anxiety attack,” Aiden explains. This he can do, leaving Jacob free to try to help Ryan. “We need medicine to calm him down--something stronger than what the receptionist gave him.”  
“Do you need to see the doctor?” the nurse asks, warily watching the clenching fists, shaking limbs, thrashing arms.  
“Just give us some medicine,” Jacob tells him gruffly.  
“Jacob--” Aiden starts.  
“I don’t--” he looks at Aiden. “I have to stay with him,” he says desperately, and Aiden understands. He’s worried if they make too big a deal of it, they’ll have to admit him, and even he can see the validation in Jacob’s concern for that.  
“Okay,” Aiden says, then turns back to the nurse. “Yeah, just some heavy-duty anti-anxiety drugs--he normally takes forty milligrams of clonazpine, that five milligrams won’t do any good. Then we’ll see how he is, if he needs a doctor.”  
The nurse nods slowly, then goes to get the medication.  
“Jacob--he can’t talk, he can barely breathe,” Aiden says quietly. “I know you’re worried, but I think--”  
“He’s worried,” he says abruptly. “The whole time, he was worried about me. He talked about keeping me safe from whatever danger he was hearing. If I leave him, that will really freak him out. I have to stay with him, no matter what.”  
Aiden sighs in frustration. He has no idea what’s the right thing to do.  
After the nurse returns with the medication--actually, a slightly larger dose than Aiden had told him--and on top of what the receptionist had given him, Ryan has stopped fighting, allowing Jacob to hang onto him. Even the trembling has almost completely abated. A nurse comes by to check on them, asking them questions, and she grows concerned when she speaks to Ryan and he only grunts, unable to respond properly. She wants to admit him at that point, even if just for observation, and Jacob flatly refuses. They eventually compromise by letting them stay in the room for awhile longer, easily accessible to medical care.  
“I’m going to go home and check on the kids,” Aiden tells Jacob. It’s been almost two hours since they left. “I’ll grab his medication, too. And maybe something to eat. Anything else?”  
Jacob shakes his head.  
Aiden leans over and kisses him, squeezing his shoulder gently. “It’ll be okay,” he tells him softly. His hand trails along his body, reluctant to leave, until he finally has to go.  
They sit in silence, a nurse occasionally checking in to make sure they were okay. After about a half hour, Jacob heard a soft growling that he vaguely recognized.  
He looks down at Ryan. “Did you just say my name?” he asks hopefully.  
Ryan nods jerkily and says it again, though the clarity is already being lost.  
“Can you say something else? Can you talk to me?”  
His mouth works for minute, then he frowns and shakes his head, leaning into Jacob.  
“Okay. Well, when you can, talk to me, let me know you’re okay.” He rubs Ryan’s shoulder gently. That was one blessing, he felt bad thinking--he loved being able to touch him again.  
Aiden came back after an hour, bags filled with food and medication. “How is he?” he asks, nodding at Ryan.  
Jacob starts to answer when Ryan murmurs, “‘Kay.”  
Both men blink and look at him. He looks up at Jacob. “‘Kay?” he asks.  
“I think so.” Jacob laughs in relief. “Are you hearing anything?”  
Ryan tilts his head, frowning. “Little. Not--” his eyes widen and he looks back at Jacob, touching him anxiously. “‘Kay? Jacob ‘kay?”  
“What? Me?” he asks in surprise. “Yeah, I’m--is that what they were telling you? That I was in danger?”  
“Danger not safe had to protect but but but--” He starts to rock anxiously, pulling away from Jacob.  
“Slow down, kid. It’s okay.”  
“Said said said--” He shakes his head harshly. “Said going hurt you leave protect couldn’t--”  
“Shh,” Jacob hushes.  
Ryan is starting to panic again, rocking them both and breathing quickly.  
“It’s okay, Ryan,” Aiden says, sitting next to them. “Between the two of us, Jacob will be fine, I promise.”  
“No!” he shouts in frustration. He puts his hands on his head and takes a deep breath. “Said. I,” he says slowly, concentrating on finding the words and putting them together. “Hurt. You.”  
Jacob’s eyes widen in realization. “You--you would never hurt me, though. You wanted to protect me, right, that’s why you were freaking out.”  
Ryan nods. “But sick,” he says emphatically. He reaches out and touches the bruise on Jacob’s face pointedly.  
Jacob places his hand over Ryan’s. “That was an accident. I know you wouldn’t hurt me on purpose. That’s why you were upset, huh? You were afraid you’d lose it, and not only wouldn’t you protect me, you’d hurt me.”  
Ryan nods, eyes wide in fear.  
“The voices lie,” Aiden tells him. Ryan turns to look at him. “What else have they told you? They’ve told you to fight us, to hurt others, and that’s never been any good. You trust me and Jacob over them, don’t you? Well, then listen when we tell you that you are fine, and we love you, no matter what.”

“Not sick,” Ryan says, rocking in his seat as he looks up at the hospital.  
Jacob looks at him. “You know, when you say that, it usually means that you are,” he points out.  
Ryan pauses with a frown. “Not sick?” he says again, questioningly.  
“No. This is something different. You’re going to start going to school here.” His chest tightens at the thought. His school will no longer take him because of his violent outbursts, and he is sent home more days than not anyway. Last time he’d been hospitalized, they’d suggested an outpatient program, where he would go to school at the hospital, working one-on-one with a special teacher in a more supported setting. It sounded like full-time hospitalization to Jacob, and he balked, but he needs to go to work, and Ryan can’t go to school, so they’re out of options.  
Ryan twists his hands as they step out of the car. He shakes his head. “Don’t want to go, Jacob,” he says, voice tight with unhappy worry.  
“It’s okay,” Jacob tells him, trying to keep his own displeasure out of his voice. “It’s just for a few hours a day. You’ll be okay.”  
They go in and are pointed in the direction of the outpatient activity room. There are four other students and five adults, one of whom walks over to greet them. “Hello,” she says. “You must be Jacob. And Ryan.”  
“I’m not sick,” Ryan tells her immediately. Jacob is surprised that he’s half-hiding behind him. Ryan has never been shy--when he was well, he loved people, and wanted to talk to eveJacobne, and now he isn’t afraid of anything, and is unaware of others at best.  
“I’m glad to hear that,” the woman says. “We’ll have to make sure you stay that way. Do you want to come join us?”  
Ryan shakes his head.  
“Ryan,” Jacob says warningly. “Sorry. He’s usually not this shy.”  
“Don’t worry,” the woman assures him. “This is a big thing, isn’t it? You can take your time.”  
Ryan rocks on his heels, watching as she goes back to the little group.  
Jacob looks at the other students--a young woman with scars down her arms, an older boy who is rocking and humming, a frighteningly thin girl, and a young man in black. He tries to imagine Ryan among them, a teenager who needs to go to school at the hospital.  
Ryan says his name, tilting his head. “I’m here,” Jacob says. Ryan is still hiding behind him, presses his face against the back of Jacob’s shirt. He’s not used to this contact from his brother and looks back at him. “You doing all right?”  
Ryan makes a soft sound, then pulls away from Jacob. To the older man’s surprise, he walks over to the group, sitting as far as he possibly can while still being considered joining it. The woman looks at him and smiles welcomingly. She explains the activity they are doing and invites him to join in.  
Jacob watches them for a long moment before turning to go.  
“Jacob!”  
The call stops him in his tracks. He’s suddenly reminded of the first time he tried to leave Mitchell at daycare--key word being ‘tried’. One call from the child and all thought left, leaving him with nothing but utter fear at being without him. It’s like that now.  
He turns back. Ryan has jumped back to his feet and is watching Jacob anxiously, twisting his hands. “Jacob, stay, don’t leave,” he says desperately.  
“I’ll come back,” Jacob tells him. “I promise.”  
“No.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he adds softly.  
Jacob goes to him. “It’s not your fault,” he says. He takes a step to go again, watching Ryan. The boy remains standing, but does not stop him again.  
He is surprised when Jacob returns, and Jacob realizes that he had been afraid they were leaving him there again. Several times, he’s been left alone. At the hospital, at respite. He loves his family, and his family keeps leaving him alone.  
He takes his brother’s hand with a sad smile. “Let’s go home.”

Jacob has become a light sleeper. If Ryan doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t sleep, he can’t. And Ryan doesn’t sleep much.  
He gets up and sees Ryan desperately trying to open the door to the kids’ room. (Tommy may be a heavy sleeper, but even he was getting worn out by Ryan’s frequent midnight ramblings, and they decided that it would be best to give the oldest child his own room. It made the other room a little crowded with the three of them, but there was the added bonus of being able to sleep a little easier—locking the door, eveJacobne could be safe.) “Let them sleep,” he tells the teenager.  
“No, I have to hit them,” Ryan says, and there is such panic in his voice, one would almost believe it was a true life-or-death situation.  
“Ryan--”  
“Nonono,” Ryan insists, banging on the door now. Jacob mentally sighs--so much for saving anyone some sleep.  
“Come on. Let’s go to the main room. I’ll stay up with you.”  
“No. No.” Ryan bangs his head against the door with his protests. Jacob winces and grabs his wrist. As predicted, Ryan screams at the touch and twists away. Jacob decides to go into the living room and hope his brother will follow.  
After a few minutes, he does--thank goodness for the ADHD sometimes, it’s easy to distract him from specific psychoses. Ryan goes to the front door, banging on it. Jacob prepares to leap up to stop his leaving, but it seems the contact is all the teenager is after. He laughs and twists his hands, runs to another wall and bangs on that, circling the room. Jacob sits on the couch and watches him painfully, hoping he just needs to get some energy out of his system and then he’ll settle down.  
When he grows bored of this, he starts jumping and chattering gibberish. (Or mostly--Jacob has realized that he can catch snippets from recordings, albeit mixed up and inverted, in his speech.) He then falls to the ground, twisting his hands, stomping his feet, laughing.  
Jacob sighs. The doctors said that the medication usually made people sleepy. Not Ryan. It was part of the reason they diagnosed him with ADHD in addition to the dyslexia and bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder--he truly cannot sit still for any amount of time. It’s not unusual for him to “fidget” (the movements were too large and forceful for the term, but he couldn’t think of a better one) for hours, until he just falls asleep wherever he is, body exhausted from the constant motion. The doctors even told them that weight gain was a common side effect, but between this nonstop action and never eating, Ryan had lost so much that they had prescribed supplements just to keep him healthy. For whatever reason, he did not react how he was supposed to.  
After two and a half hours of this, Jacob gets up and retrieves his sleeping medication. He tries to wait as long as possible, since he knows it will be a struggle getting him to take them, and knows that they’re less effective the more you use them. This happens so often, they’ve decided that as long as he can’t hurt the kids or get out of the house, the best they can do is let him sleep if he can, or stay up until he gets so tired he crashes and sleeps all day. But Jacob is up, and just watching Ryan is making him exhausted, and he doesn’t want to deal with it anymore.  
“I’m tired, Jacob,” Ryan says as Jacob sits next to him with the medication. He says it with a smile, drumming his feet on the floor, banging his head against it. Manic, Jacob thinks sorrowfully.  
“I’ll bet,” he says. “I’ve got your medication right here.” Three times the recommended dose, because from the very beginning, that was what it took to get him to sleep. When he’d told the doctors, they’d been all but ready to file child abuse charges for overdose, until they’d seen his impossible medical immunity for themselves.  
Ryan shakes his head, laughs when he sits up suddenly and pushes Jacob away roughly.  
“Don’t you want to go to sleep?”  
He shakes his head again and leaps up to pace the room again.  
“Ryan…” Jacob stands and follows him.  
“No medicine, no medicine, no sleep,” Ryan sing-songs. “Fine, fine, okay.” He swats at Jacob’s offered hand, but he’s learned, and keeps a hold of the pills. If it were anyone else, he probably would have gotten violent by now, but he’s only ever struck out at his brother once or twice without provocation. Of course, if this goes on much longer, he will see it as provoking.  
Once, people thought the mentally ill were possessed by demons, and Jacob can see that. The words, the manic laughter, the movement long past the point of exhaustion--it’s like some evil entity is possessing his kind and friendly little brother and driving him to madness.  
He moves quickly and grabs Ryan’s arm again. “Don’t, Jacob!” Ryan says, grabbing his wrist in an attempt to yank him off.  
“Take your medicine so you can sleep.”  
“No!” he wails, sliding to the ground. But he doesn’t resist when Jacob puts his hand to his mouth, and swallows the pills. An easy day, then. He hopes the morning round will go as easily.  
Ryan laughs as Jacob steps away and begins to pound the ground again, with hands, feet, and head. After awhile, he rolls over onto his stomach, putting his head in his arms, laughing hysterically, tapping his feet on the ground. Imitation of happy childish innocence.  
“Jacob,” he says, looking at him with a smile. “I hate being alive.”  
It sends chills down Jacob, the sentence and the expression of ecstasy as he says it. “Why?” he asks hoarsely.  
Ryan laughs as if it’s the funniest thing in the world. “I go to school at the hospital,” he says, singing the words eerily. “I can’t do Lilly’s homework. I’m mean and I want to kill eveJacobne. I can’t control myself. I hate my brain, I hate myself, I hate being alive.”  
Jacob watches numbly as he closes his eyes and rests his head back in his arms, giggling merrily for a few more minutes until the pills finally send him to sleep. Jacob himself can’t sleep the rest of the night.

The experimental drugs are a long shot, and the doctor makes no qualms about his disapproval--it took three doctors just to find one who would try, but he thought it was something they had to pursue. The drugs aren’t working. He’s on a cocktail of dozens, most double or triple the normal dosages, and they’ve exhausted all other options. He figures the worst thing that can happen is no worse than where they are now.  
Ryan is fine until the shot. His hands twist nervously, but Jacob thinks they might actually be okay. But the second the needle comes out, his eyes lock onto that, and Jacob can see the illness (now that he knows what to look for, he wonders how he could have ever missed it) rising up inside him.  
The doctor comes forward, ready for the injection, and Ryan breaks down. He swats the offending implement away, eyes glaring. “Danger bad,” he says, beginning to rock.  
“It’s medicine,” Jacob tells him. “It’ll make you better.”  
Ryan nods. The doctor tries again, filling a new syringe and coming forward. Ryan’s eyes are wide in fear and his body trembles. Suddenly, he lashes out, kicking the doctor so she cries out, then he leaps up and runs to attack her. Jacob grabs him, and he screams and falls to the ground, twisting Jacob’s arm as he goes down. “You’re okay, Ryan, it’s not a weapon, she’s not going to hurt you.”  
“Enemy,” Ryan hisses.  
Jacob looks at the doctor. “Can I give it to him? I think he’d be more comfortable with that.”  
She shakes her head regretfully. “We can train you later, but right now, we have to follow the procedure, just to make sure.”  
Jacob nods. “It’ll be fast,” he tells Ryan. “It won’t hurt. You’re safe.”  
“Danger enemy bad enemy,” he disagrees. He snarls and starts to leap after her again, even as Jacob tries to hold him back. “Ryan,” Jacob says.  
“He needs to stay still,” the doctor says.  
Jacob grabs Ryan and pushes him to the ground, pinning him. Ryan drums his feet on the ground unhappily and screams. He claws and flexes his hands, desperate for a fight. Then he looks up at Jacob and says, “Stop, Jacob, stop, stop.” He’s not sure if he’s telling him to stop him from hurting the woman or to let him go. He sees danger and he is terrified because Jacob won’t let him fight it.  
“I’m sorry,” Jacob tells him, then looks up and nods at the doctor. He waits through Ryan’s terrified screaming as she approaches, gives him the shot, and backs away before he releases his brother.  
To his shock, Ryan leaps up and gives him a tight hug.  
Jacob barely has time to react before Ryan takes off again. He is practically vibrating, his whole body twisting and twitching and moving. He runs to the door and yanks on it, not turning the knob in his frantic desire to escape, so it only rattles. He kicks the door and screams his frightened frustration.  
“Hang on,” Jacob tells him, going to grab him to prevent his escape. Jacob knows he’s scared--he hates touch and will usually push him away if he even attempts to comfort him. He never seeks it, even briefly. The fact that he did says how afraid he is. This is emphasized by how he crumples into himself, falling to the ground and covering his head. Jacob sees the panic attack coming on and kneels before him. “Shh, shh, you’re okay, you’re okay.”  
The doctor runs through the warnings as quickly as possible so they can get out. She tells him to come back in a month to check in and possibly receive the next shot. She then hesitates, and offers something for Ryan’s anxiety.  
He contemplates saying yes, but turns it down, deciding that the best way to help right now is to get out of there and home.  
He watches for any change the next day and sees nothing.  
Ryan goes to school, and it’s a normal day. In class, he starts to break down. He runs at the teacher in attack, and his aide grabs him and restrains him.  
Ryan kicks and struggles. “Do I need to call Jacob?” his aide asks. They will do what they can to prevent it, but it’s not an uncommon occurrence.  
Ryan breathes deeply and shakes his head. “No,” he says softly.  
The aide is surprised. In the midst of a violent episode, half the time, he can’t focus to listen, much less respond. “You sure?”  
Ryan nods and his body relaxes as the aide lets him go. The aide is further stunned when he goes to his seat and, rocking in his chair, resumes his work.  
The next day, Jacob wakes with a start. He actually got a full night's sleep, which means something must be very wrong. He leaps up and goes to find Ryan, only to stop in the living room, where the boy is calmly listening to one of his recordings. The scene makes him audibly gasp. Though Ryan used to love listening to his recordings, learning things, it has been months since he has been able to do so. Even on quieter days, when he thought he could try, he would only be able to get through a few sentences at a time before he has to jump up and go do something else. Now, he’s just sitting there, listening contently, as though they have stepped back in time a year.  
The boy looks up at Jacob and smiles, eyes clear and sane, and Jacob knows they have an answer.


End file.
